On Highway 17

Winnie cleared her throat.

"Turn around," Cob attempted to command.

But the attempt failed. Winnie placed a hand on her hip. Cob's wet clothes looked like a ball of colours lodged into the three-sided space between her forearm, bicep and side. "You put a stone inside my vagina," she said, emphasising each word. "Now strip."

Cob dug his thumbs under the elastic band at the top of his boxers, stretched, and stepped out of them into complete nakedness. Winnie added the boxers to her ball of Cob's other clothing.

"I'll make sure they dry," she said, looking at his not-quite-flaccid penis. She was straining to suppress a smirk. He was trying not to flush. As far as he could remember, he'd never been naked with a woman in the middle of a forest before. "You may step into the living room—it's the one with the fireplace, to your immediate left—and wait for me. I'll be with you shortly." She started, stopped: "And don't touch anything."

* * *

The living room was small and cosy. It smelled of sugar and berries, leather, kerosene and wood. Shelves overflowing with old photographs, papers, crafts, tools and knives, and other, sometimes unascertainable, bric-a-brac lined the walls. Several tall windows let in blocks of dull sunlight through foggy, unclean panes. The overriding atmosphere was one of stillness, broken only by the many, slowly gliding, particles of dust.

There was also the fireplace. It was imposingly solid even when cold. But the fireplace was hardly the room's dominant feature. What first caught Cob's attention as he crossed the threshold—what made him pause, his heart beat twice—was another object, a once-living one: a large black bear-skin rug that covered a sizable portion of the wooden floor. The dead bear's massive head, maw open, teeth sharp, stared blankly ahead at nothing.

Cob took a seat on a cushion on the floor, making sure to keep his feet away, just in case.

After rubbing some warmth into his nude body, he started to glance around. Masculine faces reflected his gaze from several of the photographs. Perhaps Winnie was married: a thought that made the presence of the knives slightly disconcerting. He held his breath and listened for a suggestion either way, but the only sound was silence, no marital conversation, no man's heavy stomp—broken finally by the shriek of a whistling kettle.

He was eyeing a raccoon-tailed hat sitting atop a stack of books when Winnie walked in, carrying two steaming cups.

"I made coffee," she said.

He held out his hand and waited for her to pass him one of the cups. She raised an eyebrow. "Do you think I'll drink it for you, too? Stand up."

"I'm naked," he said.

"I'll get you something to wear in a second. Just take the coffee." Impatience dripped from her voice.

He stood without covering up and took the cup from her. It felt pleasantly warm in his hands. She sipped from hers and pointed with her chin toward one of the shelves. "There," she said. "I saw you looking at it." He didn't understand. "You wanted clothing, didn't you?" He followed with his eyes and realized her chin was pointing in the direction of the raccoon hat. "What?" But, instead of answering, she took three strides, bent over a wicker chair, retrieved the hat from its shelf, and put it crookedly on Cob's head.

"There. You're not naked anymore."

Unclothed and in a Davy Crockett cap, it was a new low. Cob lifted his cup to his lips and took a long drink of coffee. At least the coffee wouldn't make fun of him.

Something in the cup rattled.

He looked down. The liquid looked up, dark and opaque. It had tasted like coffee, but: he shook the cup again.

Another rattle.

"Why don't you play me one of your songs," Winnie said.

"What's in the coffee?" Cob said back.

"You know what's in the coffee."

Even the raccoon's tail seemed to bristle. "How would I know?" he barked, but was immediately aware that the question was automatic. He did know. He'd known from the very first rattle.

"Because we're crazy in the same ways, Cob Augo."

He felt his erection returning.

"Did you"—He nearly choked, swallowing an excess of saliva and a few unimportant words.—"all this time?"

"Do you like your coffee heavily roasted or not?"

He took another drink.

"When I was reaching for your hat, you tried to look up my dress," she said.

That wasn't quite true. He'd been staring through her dress, at her ass, though that defence was hardly noble. Plus, he did want to know if she was still wearing panties. And he would have gladly looked up her dress had there been more time. And, really, how much more embarrassed could he possibly be. "I tried," he admitted, "unsuccessfully."

"Do you want another chance?"

His mind was stunned. His cock nodded feverishly.

"I'll make you a deal. I will let you look up my dress if you play a song for me. My only condition is that the song is new—a song that no one's heard before."

"Agreed," he said, and tried lowering himself, cross-legged, onto the cushion on the floor.

Winnie tut-tutted him into an awkward semi-crouch, instead. "That's my spot. You can sit on Edward." Her arm pointed at the bear skin rug. "He's fluffy and warm and he doesn't bite—anymore." Neither Winnie's voice nor the bear's facial expression suggested a desire to be disobeyed. Cob did as instructed.

The bear's fur was long and softer than anything he'd experienced. Sitting on it was like melting into a layer of warm butter as hundreds-of-thousands of individual hairs, the same midnight colour as Winnie's, rose against his skin and tickled the much coarser hairs covering his own body.

"I'll bring your guitar," she said.

But Cob understood that, for once, he wouldn't need his guitar. It was as obvious as the rattle of the stone in his coffee cup. In the Tasty Totem, Winnie had made him feel joy because he'd felt a common creation with her. This was the next step. If it was too literal, so be it. He had no pride or pretence left to lose. She'd stripped him of those as easily as of his clothes. "I don't need my guitar," he said.

He anticipated her imminent protests. "I promised you a song. I'll give you a song." Finally he'd caught her off guard with something! Watching her struggle to understand was a happy novelty. Maybe he wasn't quite the fool in the coonskin hat that, inevitably, he looked. He went on, "But one condition deserves another, and my condition is that a new song deserves a new guitar, and, as my guitar, I choose you, Winnie Youngblood."

She downed the rest of her coffee in one gulp.

He set his aside.

"And how exactly does one become a guitar?" she asked.

"One pictures it—clearly, with details. Then one attempts to create the picture with reality."

She scoffed. "I can't do that. I can't picture myself as a guitar. It's absurd."

"Have you seen a guitar?"

"Of course." Cob's cock licked its lips.

"Then picture it."

Winnie leaned against the wall. The blue material between her breasts tightened. "When I make a marmalade or a sauce, there's a recipe I follow. Instructions. Can't you picture it for me and tell me the instructions?"

"We're creating," Cob said, "not recreating. The first marmalade wasn't made from a recipe."

When Winnie didn't react, Cob grabbed his cup and lifted it to the heavens. "Cheers!"

"And what are you toasting?"

"The Dead Horse River. The ridiculous, the dreamers and the losing of self-restraint." He smiled so wide the corners of his mouth hurt. "I'm naked, save for a raccoon on my head. I have an erection I can't get rid of, and I'm sitting on a bear named Edward. For the last few minutes, I've been drinking coffee that tastes vaguely like your pussy. Spare me if you feel a little self-conscious."

She dropped her shoulders and came toward him like a puppy-done-wrong.

She sat beside him on Edward's soft black fur, and leaned her head against his shoulder. "If you're sorry for putting a stone in me, I'm sorry for making you get naked and wear a coonskin headpiece." She scratched her forehead. "But I think the truth is that neither of us truly wants to apologize. Thank God for that." And she dropped her head onto his knees, then pulled herself forward and rotated her body until her back was across his thighs and both her head and legs were tangling off his crossed knees.

Cob responded by slipping his left forearm under her head, propping up her neck, and rubbing her stomach with his other hand, before moving it cautiously beneath her dress and realizing—much later than he would have liked—that she wasn't wearing panties after all.

"I picture myself as a slide guitar," she said.

He put two fingers in her mouth to shut her up. "And when you picture this slide guitar, does it talk?" She answered by sucking his fingers.

He enjoyed the sensation for a few seconds before removing his fingers from her mouth and threading them into as much of her hair as possible. She let him. He brought the hair over her face until she was faceless and the strands were solid black and reaching to the bottoms of her ribs. "One," he counted, separating one-sixth of the strands into a band; "Two," and another sixth became another band; and all the way until "Six," when all of Winnie's hair was divided, and the strings of Cob's guitar were complete.

Wedges of skin and two quiet eyes peeked out from in-between.

Cob bent his body low and wrapped his left arm under Winnie's neck as far as it would go, until his nimble fingers were able to touch all six bands of hair. Carefully, his breath held, he pressed one finger on each of the second- and third-closest strings. "E minor," he said. Winnie moaned. He immediately shifted to a different chord. "D minor. This one sounds brighter." Winnie moaned more brightly. "And"—His fingers crawled up her torso: deft, gentle.—"G major." Winnie's moan became a deep kitten's purr. Cob returned to Em. The resulting grunt warmed his cheeks. "That's not how you play a slide guitar, of course, but this is my first time, so you'll have to excuse me." She offered no reaction. She had become the instrument.

Cob played a simple blues progression, followed by a traditional Appalachian ballad. Winnie purred and twisted, squirmed, hummed and, gutturally-groaning, liquefied into the appropriate sounds. He played a pop song; she puffed. He played a song for lovers; she sighed.

Over time, the bands of Winnie's hair began to come apart, to blend, the guitar strings frayed, but it made no difference. Cob's fingers still twirled and flew. And, as they did, his other hand began to add a beat: first tapping on Winnie's stomach, then slapping against her thigh—while the familiar youthful shapes of rock-and-roll spread out across her breasts.

And as the music became wilder, less refined, so did Cob's motions. His fingers pressed harder, his fingernails dug deeper. On some notes he pinched. On others he vibrated. And on others still he slid gracefully from the top of the neck to its bottom, pointer finger barre'ing, ring finger rhythmically repeating. Winnie's breath quickened, her pulse doubled. Cob experimented, recalled and improvised. He tapped and he counted, treble-clef'ed and quarter-noted, and composed until, closing his eyes, he forgot and felt and finally knew that the music he was creating was as real as any he had ever made.

Winnie's moans grew louder.

More passionate.

Uncontrolled.

Cob's right hand crawled between her trembling legs.

His cock tick-tocked, a metronome.

The bands of hair across Winnie's body were a ruffled mess. The hair on the inside of her thighs was wet. Over the former, like chord shapes he floated; into the latter he greedily descended. His fingertips dipped and moistened. He pushed those fingertips, those whole fingers, inside Winnie's pussy. She moaned in Dm. He removed them; Winnie quivered, a perfectly realized F.

He petted. He teased. He penetrated. He:

Strummed.

And she reacted and murmured; blubbering, moaned; groaned; grunted; and—finger-fucked beyond all measure of decency—exploding and screaming, unwilling, unable, to-stop-herself, cummed.

Cob's hands stopped moving.

Winnie's body vibrated to stillness in the murky sunlight.

Particles of dust drifted through the air.

And yet music reverberated between the walls even as Edward the Bear's expressionlessness persisted and Cob fixed the raccoon hat, resting dangerously crooked, on his head while Winnie rolled off his legs, onto her stomach, onto the black fur.

The music was louder than the silence.

Outside, somewhere in the world beyond, lightning flashed, followed by the faint crash of distant thunder. Cob realized there were no clocks in the room. Theirs was a time out of mind, a secret place. He slapped his erect cock to the side and watched it rebound to attention. Never had he made a woman cum—at least not like today, not for certain.

He picked up his cup and drank the rest of the lukewarm coffee down to the stone, which he let fall into his palm before putting it back into the cup:

Rattle.

Winnie stirred. She got to her knees; then, slowly, rose to her feet. She swayed to the music. Cob watched her sway and felt jealous of Edward the Bear and Arnold the Cook and Dull the Mechanic and anyone else who'd ever seen Winnie or fantasised about her. He even felt jealous of John the President, because who could say he'd never, in his dreams, imagined Winnie swaying to the music just like so: "Cob Augo," she said, slipping easily out of her blue dress, "You are not really from 1961 and neither am I."

He tried to speak—"Shh."

She swayed, she neared, she put a finger to his lips. "Don't say words, for this is the best part. This is the part where I fuck you."

And she pushed his the chest.

He let himself fall backward onto black fur.

When he was as defenceless as an overturned beetle and his cock was the tallest part of his body, she squatted over him with her legs spread and, slowly, began the descent. Cob understood the masculine fascination with rockets. Winnie's pussy touched the head of his penis: its hairs raked his delicate skin, the soft surplus of flesh took him into its hands like she had taken his cheeks. He growled. Or Edward growled. Or: as much as he wanted to let off his boosters and explode upward, he also wanted—wanted more—to make this moment last for eternity.

The head of his cock disappeared inside Winnie.

The veins entangling its shaft pulsated with hot blood. Caffeine swam inside. He wanted more coffee, more liquid. The pussy squished and squelched like a bowl of chocolate pudding devoured by a fat boy with a silver spoon. He felt the pussy devouring him. He felt her weight and her wetness arrive at the root: his thighs, his belly. He was in her completely. He had her; she had him. If she were a moon, he would have planted a flag in her lunar soil, ripped off his oxygen mask, cast his radio equipment into the coldness of space and breathed-in whatever atmosphere she had, hoping for, but oblivious to, his life lasting for more than a few indescribable seconds.

She leaned forward. Her hair fell onto his face, his chest. She started moving her hips. He felt the various angles of her mass. His cock slid in, slid out. He opened his mouth with no intention of saying anything—just to breathe. She licked the row of his upper teeth. He locked his knees and grabbed her upper body, taking hold of her breasts. She bounced; he squeezed. She squeezed; he thrusted: past the constricting, grasping tightness of her pussy.

The pale handprints on her chest dissolved into the colour of honey.

She stroked his face with a snake's tongue.

He kneaded her ass with a lustful baker's hands.

And when he couldn't take it anymore, when his grip was possessive, breath savage and mind devolved past primitive man's invention of fire, she let up—slowed, lightened—rose; suddenly massless, she floated up and his cock felt as wet and cool as his nose had once, a long, long time ago by a roughly running, loudly buzzing river.

She left the room.

His cock punctuated the sentence.

He pictured her crying, overcome with emotion. He wanted to comfort her like a friend. He pictured her laughing, and wanted to choke her like an enemy. He imagined her as she was and as she had been and as she would be till death do us part and all he wanted was to fuck her again, to keep fucking her, to keep her as his fucking pet.

"What's your favourite berry?"

Her voice was muffled. The question sounded sincere. "I'm all out of strawberry, but black currant is delicious on summer evenings."

She reappeared carrying a pair of glass jars filled with two different colours of jam. "I recommend this one," she said, and held up the darker of the two. "It's less sweet, more tart, goes well with most anything. But it's up to you." She looked older naked than she had clothed. "Which do you prefer to taste like, musician?"

"I agree with expert opinion," he said.

She lay the other jar on a shelf, between two hunting knives and an antique silver bracelet, and sat beside him. "Open it," she said. He untwisted the lid with a thump. The fruity aroma escaped up his nostrils. Winnie took back the jar, stuck her hand inside—her wrist was just small enough to fit—and scooped out a handful of black currant jam; which she proceeded to rub on Cob's nude, sweating chest. Before he could react, she rubbed trails across his face, then his thighs, then licked up the taste from all three parts of his body. She stuck out a stained tongue: "Try some." He set loose his tongue on hers. She wrapped her fingers around his hard cock, which, when their kiss was finished, she covered in an entire second helping of black currants until it glistened and they dripped, gooey, over his testicles.

When she leaned down to clean up, he made sure her head stayed below. She kissed her way up the shaft of his cock. He gathered her hair and held it away from her face because he wanted to see: her teeth pressing into his skin, her eyes staring into his. Her tongue became a pillow for his cock. He felt the ribbing on the underside of her mouth and her saliva thicken, bubble and, delicately, burst. She was swallowing the jam. She was sucking him. He tightened the fist squeezing her hair. A few streaks of rain slashed at the windows. His muscles contracted and toes curled. The raccoon hat fell forward off his head, onto Winnie's. He pressed down on it—the hat, the head—until dark purple spit flowed out from between lips-and-cock. Winnie gasped. Cob pushed deeper, further, harder.

And orgasmed.

His semen mixed with the black currant jam and, together, they went down Winnie's throat, into her gut.

Cob let go of hat, hair and head.

More tiny fists of drizzle tapped at the window panes.

"Your guitar," Winnie said and thunder rolled and Cob realized that by this time tomorrow he'd be gone, would be six hundred miles further along Highway 17, six hundred closer to Berkeley and six hundred away from Black Bear Portage. "It's still on the porch. You should bring it in. The grey clouds are coming. The storm will be here before nightfall."

"It's not dark yet," he said.

She said, "But it's getting there."

* * *

Outside, the warm air was stagnant and the atmosphere had turned to early evening pale. A damp wind hung like a towel that wouldn't dry. Cob looked around. The forest revealed nothing; there was nothing to see but the forest. But he knew that beyond lay fog and fame, Berkeley and all the days still to come, so he picked up his guitar and went into the living room, where Winnie was lying naked on her back, big eyes forced open, a question forming on their glassy surfaces. "Tell me," she whispered to the ceiling, "what's so special about that guitar?"

Cob put the guitar down and laid himself on the floor beside her. "It's the guitar I saw," he said, "when I pictured myself famous. It's one of the clear details." She finished the thought for him, "And now you have to create the picture with reality." He put his palm on her forehead. "You think I'm naïve." She said, "I'm afraid you'll get hurt." He felt the muscles on her head move. "Do you know why I took you out here—what I wanted to show you?" He didn't say anything. She said, "I wanted you to see the house that my grandfather died in, that my father died in, and that one day I will die in." The distant thunder rolled closer. "After a long and happy life, unlike the horse," he said but she didn't hear. "I'm afraid fate is not what you think it is, Cob Augo. To you, fate is hope. To me, it's knowing that there's not going to be anything else."