Awoken by the Wolf - 1. Chapter 1

Seattle, Spring 2018

 

Dr. Vince Meredith looked at his wrist watch. The digits read 12.15.

“About time”, he whispered with a twinkle in his eyes, “He can be there any minute now!”.

He rose from behind his desk and walked to the window, that had a view over the building entrance and the Quad of the campus of the university he was working for.

Vince waited impatiently at the window. Did the boy already pass? Did he miss him, maybe by just a minute?

A sigh of relief followed: there he was.

A young student of about twenty left the building and walked on the pavement in front of the entrance. His curly blonde hair shone in the spring sun and danced around his head in the rhythm of his supple movements. Vince couldn’t help it; he simply moaned at the sight: “How gorgeous you are!”

He sure was. He looked like the typical sports boy: broad shoulders, muscled arms and legs, skin lightly tanned and a very cute ass, all packed in an extremely tight faded jeans and a flashy tank top. He looked as if he might be an American football player; no, maybe more a swimmer champion. Vince’s eyes followed him, sucking in every movement and every jump of the blonde tresses. His delight was of only short duration: it ended when the boy turned around the corner and disappeared out of sight.

Somewhat dejected he returned to his desk and slumped in the chair. He had observed the boy every day for weeks now, every time marveling at what he saw but he was no step further in finding something out about him. He had no idea about his name, what study he followed or how old he was. It remained what it had been in the first place: a delicious torture for about two or three minutes a day and something to dream about when he got home. Besides: even if he had found his name or age or whatever what, would that have changed anything? Mentally he shook his head: no, he would just be staring at the boy as he had done a few minutes ago. Longing but without guts!

The last thought milled trough his mind for a few minutes but then he forced himself to return to the job at hand, comforting himself with the notion that the beautiful boy would be walking out of the building at about 12.15 tomorrow again, ready to be admired and adored in deepest silence.

 

After a day’s work he slammed the door of his apartment shut and went straight to the kitchen. He opened the fridge and took the bottle of cooled white wine out of it. Grabbing a glass from the counter he went to the living room, fell on the couch, kicked off his shoes and lied down, staring at the ceiling.

His cat, the only living creature that shared the apartment with him, jumped on top of him, searching for a nice, warm spot to do a nap. Unconsciously he started to cuddle the little animal, stroking his soft coat and causing a content purring.

While his hands opened the wine bottle his mind drifted back to the image of the cute student, his “midday dream boy”, as he had dubbed him some weeks ago.

“It is all so useless!” he muttered. A wry smile appeared on his face: it was not only meant to augment the idea of uselessness, but also because he started to talk out loud to himself again. Not that it mattered. His cat wouldn’t object and for the rest there was no one in the apartment, who could be irritated by this habit or would maybe immediately ask for this admittance to a psycho ward. He found it helpful when formulating his thoughts, not the professional ones at the university, but his own, personal and deepest feelings, feelings that were more and more reaching the level of despair.

He filled the glass with wine and put it on the table, readily within reach.

“I’m a sexual spastic!” he uttered. For a few seconds he looked at the ceiling, thinking it over. Then he said:

“Who wrote that? Oh yes, Frank Zappa…in “Bobbie Brown”. Well, I’ve got news for you, Frank. There are not only sexual spastics, but also sexual paralytics…like me!”

He took a sip of wine, shaking his head and thought:

“You drink too much lately. And, my man, it is no use to stick labels on yourself. You have to find the reasons why it came this far and find solutions to do something about it!”

His mind drifted back to when he was a young boy in Okanogan, that small town with a population of about two thousand in the rural parts of the state of Washington.

He didn’t consider his youth as unhappy. OK, he had always been a lonely kid, who felt perfectly happy with reading books and looking at birds. He went through elementary school as if it was a picnic, then high school without any noticeable problems. That is, as far as his results were concerned. But as a freshman at the age of fourteen he noticed something peculiar. He could totally ignore the gorgeous cheerleader on the field and instead fall head over heels in love with that hunk of a local football hero that was standing beside her. He knew damned well, that something was out of the ordinary; he might be somewhat withdrawn and lonely but he certainly was no fool! But more than that: he sensed, that this preference would not be accepted in the tightly-knit, conservative Okanogan community. So, he just withdrew more, making long walks in the forests on the hills around the small town, watching birds, besides catering for his sexual needs by wanking. He felt, that the birds around him would understand him and would do him no harm because of it. Moreover, without planning it he steeled his muscles of his lean body for longer treks in the future.

Things got more difficult while being a sophomore. First there was the continuous nagging question his mother asked him far too often:

“Now, Vince, when will you be coming home with a nice girl friend?”.

He had no plans to come home with a girlfriend. He had nothing against girls, just to talk to and to study together. But for the rest? Girls were so…female and he knew for sure by now that he didn’t like females but males. He got away from the questioning by avoiding his mother as much possible, making even longer walks in the forests.

One evening he had to go to the toilet when he was in bed. While passing his parent’s bedroom he overheard part of their conversation.

“I’m worried about Vince”, his mother said, “It looks he has no interest what so ever in girls”.

“Oh well, “, his father had replied, “He’s a shy kid. He’ll get over it. And when he gets over it, we’ll have to slow him down. Then he wants to fuck every girl in a five miles radius”.

“Charly,” his mother reacted in a punitive tone, “Don’t you talk so rude!”

He heard his father grin and continue with:

“Talking about fucking, honey…how…”

He had no intention to overhear the rest of their talk and went back to bed. At least it had made him clear, that he had nothing to expect in support from his parents for his different preference.

But what had more impact than his mother’s questions, was the fact, that he learned finally that he was homosexual, not in a respectful lecture from a teacher in class, but the rough way on the school grounds.

He hung around near a group of farm boys from his year when a senior held a cussing speech on the subject of queers. It was sprinkled with four-letter words and obscenity and the young sophomores listened respectfully as sophomores are supposed to do when a senior talks. Vince didn’t have a clue what the boy was talking about so he asked:

“But what I don’t get is: what is a queer?”

The senior looked at him in disbelief, contempt for so much stupidity in his eyes. However, he answered:

“That’s a boy who loves boys and fucks them in the ass…or is fucked himself in his ass by another of these dirt bags”.

Then he ranted on about what terrible things must be done to stay away from and punish queers and to exclude them from society. That small happening on a school yard in a small northwestern town learned Vince two things: first, he was a queer; secondly: the fact he was, was not looked upon kindly by society. He was certain that, if he made it public or even hinted that he was a queer, he would be ignored and outcasted, like in the old days when misfits were thrown out of a town in tar and feathers. Panic came up in him: he didn’t want to be excluded, he just wanted to live his life with the things he liked: walking in the forests and watching birds. But when he had to be at school, he just wanted to be part of the class, no matter how inconspicious that part was.

But his fear went even deeper that being discriminated at school. He could feel cold sweat running over his back when he thought about the reaction at home, when he would come out. His father, a lumber trader and not directly known for his subtle educational talents, would expel him from the house without second thought. And he had to guess about the reaction of his mother, but he could only imagine a frenzied hysterical outburst when he would tell her what he wanted to tell, not contributing a thing as far as acceptance was concerned. Being their only child there would be no one else he could turn to, no older brother or sister…provided they would understand it in the first place!

Painstakingly avoiding the confrontation and being thrown out of the house and outcasted in the town he encapsulated his true feelings and longings deep in his brains and made them his own little “Top Secret”, with a strict “Need to know”-stamp on it for everyone outside. And since he knew no one, who needed to know, he kept it for himself, building an almost impenetrable defense system around his secret in the years to follow. As part of it he withdrew even more, just walking in the forests and fields and watching birds, the most perfect example of freedom, something he was unable to attain out of fear and he became a total loner!

He took another sip of wine, as if he wanted to close the chapter of Okanogan and move on to the next phase of his life, the time in Seattle, a time which was still continuing into the present.

After thirty years he was unable to remember why he had gone to Seattle. Was it just to study at the university or had it been some kind of fleeing from the stifling atmosphere in his home town and was the study only an excuse? It didn’t matter. Because nothing had changed!

Another sip of wine followed. He sighed and whispered:

“But why didn’t it change?”

It was something he still couldn’t grasp. Everybody had told him that Seattle was a big city and, on top of that, a very liberal city, that some in his home town considered the regional Sodom and Gomorra. So, he assumed that being gay wouldn’t be an issue there.

He didn’t find any difference. No, it did not mean that Seattle turned out to be not so liberal as it was told or that being gay was an issue over there. He just didn’t notice! Although initially he tried.

He searched and found some gay clubs in town and, especially at evenings he was terrorized by his own hormones, he tried to go there, so every now and then even succeeding in ending up in front of one of those clubs. However, he always postponed the final decision to go in until the point he abandoned the whole idea. He remembered how he had walked up and down the sidewalk across the street of the entrance, sometimes for half an hour, one time even for a full two hours with the doubt tumbling through his mind:

“Shall I do it? But if someone, who knows me, sees me going in? Or coming out? Then the whole city knows I’m gay! Come on, man, be brave, fuck them all and just do it….no, don’t do it! I’m too afraid to do it!”

Again, he felt the pain he had felt each and every time he walked home again, all alone, often with the tears in his eyes, cursing himself for being a “lousy coward”, adding to his shame by crying on the street.

At the age of twenty there was a glimmer of hope when he had his first big crush on another student, who worked with him on a study project. It was a nice guy with a wonderful smile and equally gorgeous and always friendly green eyes. And he was kind a cute. Vince felt immensely attracted to him, encouraged by the easy-going, kind way the boy treated him while working. When they were doing a field survey in the summer the whole thing went sour. They were working under the burning sun and Vince got excited when he saw the naked, brown shoulder, glistening with sweat, from under the tank top. Somehow he was able to mobilize all his courage, drained from each cell of his body, and carefully he stuck out his hand and let his fingertips softly stroke the naked shoulder. The boy had turned around, looking at him as if he had been stuck by an insect and asked hissing:

“What are you? A sissy or something like that?”

Face turning red with shame Vince had stammered:

“No, no…there was a hornet on your shoulder. I just wanted to shoo it away!”

The boy just looked at him but his eyes read: “You don’t fool me, fag! Now back off!”

After that the project was never again as it was before! The boy continued working with him but kept aloof and his once sparkling kind eyes had turned into a perpetual cold green, as cold as the Arctic Ocean.

The first big crush turned into the first and at the same time last broken heart. And at that age broken hearts look as if one is walking through a slaughterhouse.

At least he had learned one thing: he never wanted to experience another humiliation like that and he simply improved his protection by resigning to his solitude. No matter what happened, he had to cater for his ever-increasing surplus of hormones so he started buying sex tools to make the process of masturbating a little more appealing. Over the years he had assembled a pretty nice collection of them but most them tended to lose their stimulating effects with their use and were just stored in a cabinet and forgotten. He experimented with the whole lot: dildo`s, dick suction pump, electric and his newest gadget was a real electrical driven fuck machine who had its best effect when he put it on slow speed, giving him the impression as if he was fucked by a sweet guy in a slow, gentle and tender way. However, this gadget lost its attractions as well and had been standing unemployed for the last months in his bedroom.

He let his hand stroke through his hair. It seemed it was getting thinner by the week. With a sigh he looked at his glass: it was still half filled.

“Just drain it”, he said to himself, “And have another”.

He drained it, feeling intensely depressed. Here he was, having just turned fifty. He was still without any relation and still a virgin, no matter from which angle you looked at it. He refilled his glass with white wine and took another swig.

“Pity you died, Frank. You could have written Bobbie Brown part 2, the emotional and sexual paralytic”, he whispered with a cynical smile.

And then there was this dream, the dream that had followed him for years. It wasn’t there every night but damned often. He dreamed he was a fish, a trout or a salmon, who swam in some river. Suddenly he notices a shadow coming from above and immediately he feels the claws tearing through the scales of his back. He is dragged into the air by a large white bird. Oh yes, he resists and struggles to get free, so that he can fall back in his own element, but in the end he is exhausted and gives in, thereby reducing himself to prey. He never was able to grasp the meaning of the dream. And discussing it with someone else was out of the question. He was certain it would give that other person too much insight in how he felt and ticked. He noticed he was cuddling the cat but had no idea if he was still cuddling her or again. She didn’t mind, she just kept purring.

He took another swig from his wine, closed his eyes and sighed deep.

“What do you think, Lady?” he asked the cat, “Is my life a waste?” T

he cat opened her eyes, lifted her head and answered: “Miaow!”

He had no idea if she meant “yes” or “no”.

 

He woke up with a terrible hangover and soaked with sweat. The dream had been in his sleep again.

Reluctantly he rose. It would be just another day of teaching, coaching, reading student’s papers and boredom, as it had been the last thirty years and would stay for the rest of his life. The only bright spot was a bit of vanity: he refused to degenerate into another sagged old guy, so he put on his jogging clothes, put on his running shoes and left the apartment for his daily rounds of jogging in the park. He had always been slim and wanted to stay that way for the rest of his miserable life. The idea of becoming fat would rob him of his last trace of dignity and self-esteem.

When he started running in the park he actually felt better. The spring sun was warm and he enjoyed the refreshing morning air and all the lush, young green around him. There was more he enjoyed: he casted stealthy looks at the gorgeous youngsters doing their morning rounds in their very short and very tight running shorts, some nice bulge here and some cute ass there. He admired the sight of muscled legs and strong shoulders, gleaming with sweat.

After he finished his rounds he went back home, showered and had breakfast. Then he cuddled the cat as a goodbye for the day with a soft “See you tonight, Lady!” and off he went to the university for another day of work.

He went to his desk, the first coffee of the day in his hand, and sat down, looking at the stack of student’s papers he was planning to read this Friday, actually wanting to read them all before the weekend started. For a few seconds he considered to have a short look around on some gay site to enjoy the pictures over there, as far as they were enjoyable, but he decided against it. He had enough to do before the weekend started.

A short knock on the door threw his plans in disarray. Before he could react the door opened and professor doctor Karl Magnusson, the department head for Zoology, entered the room. The somewhat overweight elderly man with his wild white hair and mischievous eyes behind the spectacles moved through the room and didn’t wait for an invitation to sit down. He just sat down opposite Vince.

“Good morning, doctor Meredith”, he started with a disarming smile, “Isn’t it a wonderful day?”

“Yes sir, it is”, Vince replied, adding dutifully “What can I do for you?”

“How do you feel about doing a little field work again?” the professor asked with a cheeky smile, “I saw it has been some time ago since you did your last one”.

The man was right: Vince’s last practical field work had been while working on his doctoral thesis, an odd twenty years ago. Since then it all had come down to teaching, evaluating other people’s field surveys and keeping abreast with professional literature. He liked the idea to be in the field again, out in the open. At least his morning jogging would pay off, since physically he was still in top shape.

“What is the job, sir?” he wanted to know.

The elderly professor coughed and answered: “We have a request from the Alaska Wildlife Department. It seems they are a bit worried about the condition of the bald eagle in relation to climate changes and the global warming. It seems half the population has vanished. So, they want a big survey on the population of the species”.

“Isn’t that more something for the University of Alaska, sir?” Vince objected, “They have more experience in Arctic field operations than we have”.

“Oh, they are involved. I said: the department wants a huge survey. And our colleagues in Alaska have an insufficient number of ornithologists. Their Fairbanks campus will cover the areas up north along the Beaufort Sea and north of the Brooks Range, the Anchorage campus does the Panhandle area and the south coast. But there are still some spots left uncovered”.

“Such as?” Vince asked curious, hoping he would fit in it because the idea became more and more appealing to him.

“Ever been to the Kodiak Archipelago, doctor Meredith?” the professor asked.

Vince shook his head, but the idea of going there thrilled him.

“And do you want to go there, doctor Meredith?” the professor asked with twinkling eyes.

“Yes, sir. I would love to!” was the immediate reply.

“Oh boy, why ain’t I younger? You could continue lecturing while I have the fun in the field”, the professor sighed with a beaming smile.

“Life sucks, sir!” Vince confirmed with an equally broad smile.

“Well then”, the professor continued, “I suggest you leave those papers for later and start preparing for a long field job. Don’t bother about the money, the Alaska Wildlife Department pays it all. Good luck, Vince, and have a real good time!”.

Without waiting for an answer, the man rose and walked out of the door. Vince remained seated, pushed the stack of papers aside and started working on the planning of his job on Kodiak Archipelago, considering the multitude of things that were needed, either from the Lower 48 or purchased locally. He needed lodgings, a guide, air- en water transport and numbers of other things, his list growing longer and longer. He got so absorbed in it that he even forgot his midday dream boy.

 

Kodiak Benny Benson State Airport, Spring 2018, Day 1

The Alaskan Airlines B737 touched down with a few minutes delay and rolled to the terminal building. Being in a centerline seat Vince Meredith had no opportunity to look out to his prospective working environment, so he sat a little tensed until the passengers were allowed to deplane.

After he had picked up his luggage he wandered out and took a taxi to Kodiak Town, where he had booked a hotel. While looking around while on the road he was glad he had a centerline seat, because only now he saw how the whole airport was enclosed by mountains, apart from the eastern side, where it bordered the sea. The sight would have scared the shit out of him.

Most of the road to the city followed the sea shore. He looked out over the flats, where hundreds of birds were picking for some food in the mud and peered with professional interest over het grey waters, looking at the sea birds. He thought he even saw a bald eagle in the distance, but lacking his high-power binoculars, he couldn’t be certain. The typical smells of the sea permeated everything and it filled his lungs with every breath he took. They passed the seaplane base and moved into Rezanof Drive West, where his hotel was.

He checked in and took his luggage with him to his room. First thing he did was dress in his field clothing, sturdy trousers, wool shirt and a jacket with lots of pockets, completed by mountain trekking shoes. Then he went down to the reception for another time.

The desk clerk looked a bit surprised when he turned up another time and asked:

“Forgotten something, Doctor Meredith?”

“Well, yes and no. I don’t intend to stay forever in town and want to go to work as soon as possible. But I haven’t got a clue where I can find what. Do you happen to know where I can find a guide? A guide who knows where to find birds, especially bald eagles?”

“I guess we can find one, sir”, the clerk replied, “We’ve got our contacts here in town who can provide you with a good guide. Do you want me to set it up for you?”

“Yeah”, Vince answered with a satisfied smile.

“When do you want him…ooh, sorry, or her?” the clerk asked.

“Day after tomorrow in the morning would be fine. I have to wait for the cargo part of my equipment which is due tomorrow”.

“Consider it done, sir”, the clerk said with confidence.

With nothing else to do for the moment Vince made a walk towards the docks, again enjoying the sight of many birds, swooping over the water, making acrobatic in the sky and generally fighting among another for every shred of fish. After a long day he went into bed, window open, and slept a good night’s sleep in the sea breeze without his dream returning.

 

Kodiak City, Day 3

The previous evening had been busy. He had packed his back pack according to all the rules he learned while attending University NROTC as a student, applied an extra layer of fat on his shoes to make sure they were water repellant when crossing a stream, he inspected the gear he would take with him and wondered why the University had sent so much equipment he couldn’t use in the first place. The only handy items were his high-power binoculars, his camera, his note books and the extreme thick gloves. He knew he would use them. Bald eagles are not exactly small birds or weaklings. They could reach a span of two and a half meter and a weight of six kilos. He was damned well aware that, if he had one of them in his hand, the grip of their claws or a bite with their beaks could bring him in hospital pretty quickly minus a number of fingers. He arranged with the reception clerk that the hotel would store the non-needed items until he would return.

But now he was enjoying his third coffee during breakfast. The hotel staff knew how to make a good brew so why shouldn’t he have another cup of it?

He stared out of the large windows, seeing the mountains, grown with coniferous forests, enjoying the strong, hot, black coffee. One of the waitresses came to his table and said:

“Doctor Meredith, your guide is waiting for you in the lobby”.

“Oh yes…”, he answered somewhat hesitant, being torn away from his reveries, “Gimme a moment to finish my coffee. Could you tell him I will be there any minute?”

“Of course, sir”, the girl smiled and she left for the lobby.

He drained his coffee cup, rose and walked to the lobby as well. When he entered it, he looked around for his guide, expecting a grizzled oldtimer with a long white beard, long white hair, faded jeans and some buckskin shirt. But he saw no one who matched that description, so he went to the reception clerk and said:

“My guide is supposed to wait for me over here”.

The man smiled and said: “He is, sir. The boy over there!”

Vince turned around and saw a boy of about nineteen or twenty standing in the lobby. He had a lean but well-built body. He was about six feet high and he gave the impression of being of Indian descent.

“No”, Vince thought, “Not fully. His skin is a bit lighter than Indians”.

The smart black eyes looked at him from a finely chopped face with high cheekbones and his long raven-black hair surely gave him an Indian expression, including the light-grey bandana he wore. “Only thing failing is a white feather at the back of his head”, Vince mused.

But he dismissed the thought as being pretty racist, something he didn’t want to be associated with. The boy wore trousers with large cargo pockets and a checkered shirt over his very sturdy looking trekking shoes.

“Sorry I overlooked you”, he smiled apologetically, “I was awaiting someone older, you know…long grey hair, long grey beard, buckskin jacket, that kind”.

The boy burst in laughter and said: “That’s only in the movies, sir. Even Alaska has developed since the nineteenth century”.

“So, you are my guide?” Vince asked.

The boy nodded.

“But…sorry for asking…do you know the areas I’m interested in?”

“I know them even better than the older guides, doc”, the boy answered with cocky self-confidence, “I may be young but I know what I am doing in these islands. Besides, on such short notice I’m the only one available”.

The last sentence settled it all. Vince had no intention to wait for another guide and if the boy wasn’t as good as he said he could always change guides at the rest periods in between the visits to the several islands.

“OK, what’s your name?” Vince asked.

“They call me Cagey”, the boy replied.

“And your first name?” Vince asked, knowing Cagey only as a family name.

“It is my first name”, came the short answer.

Vince had never heard Cagey as a first name so he asked:

“Where does that come from?”

“From K.G”, the boy said.

“Ah, your initials”, Vince said with a smile, “What do they stand for?”

The boy shrugged and said: “Doesn’t matter. Shall we go? There’s a charter plane waiting for us at the seaplane base”.

Vince was no fool and he knew the difference between an offhand remark and a rebuttal. And this was clearly a rebuttal: no questions or prying behind this point! He accepted it, shouldered his pack and took his laptop case.

“Sorry, doc. No use to take the laptop with you or you must have very powerful batteries. There are no wall sockets where we are going”, Cagey said matter-of-factly.

“How do I register the sightings then?” Vince asked astonished.

“I guess the old-fashioned way, doc, with pen and paper”, Cagey said with a smile.

Vince frowned but knew the boy was right and asked:

“Where’s your gear?”

“Outside”, Cagey answered.

“But someone could steal it!” Vince remarked.

“I don’t think so!” the boy answered, beaming with confidence.

The reason for this became clear when they came outside. Beside the hotel entrance stood a large pack and sitting in front of it was a huge husky, that clearly looked as if no one in his right mind would have the dumb idea to steal that backpack. It started wagging his tail as soon as he saw Cagey appear.

“May I introduce you to Kalliq, doc?” Cagey said with a smile, “I always take him with me when I’m out. He’s my early warning system against bears, foxes and all the other animals, that become too investigative”.

The dog sniffed at Vince’s trousers and wagged his tail again.

“Well, you`re accepted, doc”, Cagey said with a smile.

“What does Kalliq mean?” Vince inquired curious.

“It means Thunder. It’s from the Alutiiq language”, came the reply, referring to the language, originally spoken by the indigenous population of the Kodiak Islands.

“OK, you know some Alutiiq then?” Vince muttered, impressed that such a young boy actually knew about the existence of such an old language.

“No,” the boy said with another shrug of his shoulders, “I speak it fluently. Come, we must go now. Matt is waiting!”

Vince walked behind the boy towards the seaplane base, initially with a thoughtful face. It looked as if this field trip would be pretty lonely with a guide who was as talkative as this boy, clamming up like an oyster in a very polite but nevertheless very clear way. He looked at the lean figure in front of him and only now he noticed the rifle, slung on the back of the pack.

“You carry a rifle?” he wanted to know.

Without looking back Cagey answered: “Just in case we need it. You can call it some kind of last ditch defense!”

Matt turned out to be the pilot of an old but still sturdy Beaver floatplane, that was waiting to take them to their destination, Afognak Island.

 

The flight was in silence. Even if Cagey had been talkative, it would have been impossible, because every word would be drowned by the noise of the aircraft’s engine. Vince stared out of the window. His eyes scanned the white-tipped waves below them and then glided to the shores of the several islands. He enjoyed the sight of the mountains, some of them still capped with snow on their tops and all covered by pine trees, and imagined the abundance of wildlife that lived under that green canopy. He observed the rocky shores, even seeing a bear with her cub frolicking around.

After a little more than an hour in the air the small floatplane descended and finally landed in a spray of water on the sea strip in a bay on the south shore of Afognak, again pinched in between the hills, that seemed to grow out of the water.

They said their goodbyes to the pilot, arranged the pickup for the return flight and landed, seeing the aircraft take off again. There they were: one elderly and one young man and a dog between the mountains and the vast forests around them. They shouldered their packs, Kalliq got his own little dog pack and off they went inland, in search of bald eagles.

They trekked towards the northwest, climbing hills and descending them again. The weather was fine. There was a cool breeze from the west and initially they made good progress. Vince was pleased that he could keep up with the murderous tempo that Cagey maintained. The boy wanted to reach a trail by the end of the day, a distance of about 7 kilometers, so that they could camp along the trail. But with the distance walked growing larger and larger Vince noticed he had difficulties to maintain the steady pace, but he refused to ask to slow down a bit.

Nevertheless, they made their target at the end of the afternoon at the intersection of the trail and a small creek. The sun was slowly setting in the west. Cagey dropped his pack on the ground and immediately started to set up his tent, but after Vince dropped his pack as well, he sat down, sighed deep and exclaimed:

“Man, I’ve found a whole new set of muscles in my legs!”.

“Then rest”, Cagey said with a compassionate smile, “There’s still light enough to put up your tent later, when you’ve rested a bit”.

It took another half hour before Vince started to set up his tent, while Cagey assembled enough dry wood to build a fire later on. Kalliq just laid wherever Cagey was, his ears raised and his nose regularly sniffing high in the air.

With twilight approaching Cagey stood up, took a line out of his pack and walked to the creek. Within fifteen minutes he had two fair size fishes on the shore, had cleaned them with his large hunting knife and had them sizzling in the butter in the baking pan over the fire.

“You like fish?” he asked while keeping an eye on them.

“Yeah, I do!”, Vince replied smiling, “Especially when they are that fresh”.

Darkness fell and they ate. Vince felt as if he was starving; trekking makes hungry! And the fish was as good as he had expected, it was simply excellent. After they finished Cagney asked:

“Coffee, doc?”

Vince nodded, barely visible in the dancing light of the flames. He was enjoying the evening quietness in this wilderness. Not a sound was heard, only a soft whistling of the wind in the many tree branches.

Cagey gave him a mug of coffee. The damping aroma rose and tickled his nose. He looked to his right, where Cagey sat, both hands wrapped around the warm mug. He liked what he saw: the light of the fire accentuated his facial features: the coal-black eyes, that twinkled in the hazy diffuse light, the shadows of the high cheekbones. But he shut up about what he saw and admired. Instead he asked, just to make some conversation, avoiding that he had to end the evening in complete silence:

“You do this often, this guiding job?”

Cagey smiled shyly, without answering. Vince looked at him, wondering what kept him to give such a simple answer.

“Well?” he insisted.

The boy looked him straight in the eyes. There was uncertainty and a kind of guilt in his eyes and he looked away to the ground.

“Well, doc…”, he started hesitantly, “Actually, you are my first paid guide job!”

Vince looked at him in disbelief.

“But you said you were very experienced”, he objected.

The boy looked up, showing the same self-awareness in his eyes as before.

“I am very experienced”, he replied softly, “I’m more experienced than my boss. But this is my first paid job”.

“What do you mean?” Vince asked confused.

“I was born here, I was raised here. I trekked over the islands since I was ten. I know every spot of danger, every place where game or fish can be found, every nice camping site, I know the area as the back of my hand. Hey, see it this way: I’m an Aleut boy…well, partly that is, but nevertheless: I know the way my people lived in these islands for thousands of years. And I was taught by the best teacher one can find. It was one of the elders in my village”.

“But more experienced than your boss?” Vince asked, still not fully convinced.

“Yeah”, Cagey said simply, “He’s from Wisconsin, had to learn everything when he got here. I’m not saying he’s a rookie any longer, but he knows less of these islands than I do. But again, it is my first paid job as a guide, the only difference being the fact I’m paid now. There’s no difference in knowledge or experience”.

The boy’s answer satisfied Vince and he only acknowledged by saying: “OK!”

“But, tell me, doc”, Cagey asked, “What are you looking for?”

“For bald eagles, it’s that simple”, Vince answered, “The Wildlife Department is worried about them so they want a big survey”.

“Why worried? Cagey asked, “It seems to me there’s still plenty of them”.

“It seems their numbers are down quite a lot. Possibly as a result of the global warming”.

“Oh jeez, here we go again”, Cagey sighed in mock despair, “The global warming”.

“You don’t believe it then?” Vince inquired in surprise.

“Hey, I’m just a dumb Aleut boy with four years of high school, not a scientist”, Cagey defended himself, “But…let me put it this way: I’m willing to believe the earth is warming up and that the climate is changing. But I’m not buying it that the human race is responsible for that. It looks like we all have the idea that we can control nature and the climate. And we simply can’t! I read a lot and I’ve found out that the climate always changes. We had tropical periods and ice ages. It is in constant change, even before mankind existed”.

“That’s true”, Vince concurred, “But there is a significant raise in temperature since the Industrial era has started. That must say something about the human influence”.

“No, it doesn’t”, Cagey boggled, “The registration of weather data coincidentally fell together with the start of the Industrial age. In other words: nobody knows what was before that. It might have been colder but it might also been warmer than now. Who knows?”

Vince started to wonder if Cagey was “just a dumb Aleut boy”, as he had called himself. He didn’t have to agree with what the boy said, but at least he was thinking for himself and not just following marketing or political slogans.

“But…suppose we are responsible for the global warming”, Vince tried, not prepared to give in, “Then a lot of animals will disappear. The polar bear is already on the brink of extinction. The whale is endangered as well. Maybe the brown bears and the foxes and some birds will follow. That must hurt you as a boy of the nature”.

Cagey thought it over for a minute and replied: “Yes, it would! But…in all climate changes in the far back history species have disappeared. The dinosaurs disappeared as did the mammoth. So, if climate is changing right now, several species will disappear, because they are unable to adapt to the new environment. On the other hand, doc…”

A defiant smile came on his face when he continued:

“Did it ever hit your mind that the species Homo Sapiens might also disappear in this climate change?”

Vince shook his head decidedly and cried out: “No, impossible!”

Cagey laughed and asked: “Why impossible? We’re just another species of animals. Yes, we are a highly developed species, but predator animals nevertheless”.

“Yes, exactly. Our development is that high, that we have the gifts of speaking and of thinking. And our development will take care that we master this problem”.

Cagey took a swig of coffee, shook his head in disbelief and simply said: “When I hear all the bullshit our present President is screaming around, I start questioning if the ability to speak can still be considered as a gift. Not to mention thinking; that fool really makes me wonder if mankind is so highly developed as we think ourselves. And besides, no…more important…we can’t master this problem. That is exactly the problem with you, white people. You want to control nature and you really don’t accept that it is impossible. We go along and adapt to nature since we feel that nature is uncontrollable. We accept nature as it is”.

“But all computer models point in the same direction”, Vince said bluntly.

“Oh yeah, computer models”, Cagey sighed, “Algorithms, the answer to everything. Somehow those algorithms have the same undisputable and absolute power as the words of the Bible had in the Middle Ages. I assume you still don’t believe that Adam and Eve were the first people on earth, that was supposed to be flat in those days?”

Vince laughed and he said: “Are you sure you only had four years of high school?”

“Yeah, really…”, the boy replied.

“Why was that?” Vince desperately wanted to know.

“Quite simple…there was no money for more education”.

“What a shame!” Vince whispered.

“Sorry?” Cagey asked, not hearing what he had said.

“No, nothing, forget it!”

“Well doc, it’s time for bed. I warn you: further to the west the hills get higher and steeper so today was only peanuts”.

He threw the rest of his coffee in the fire, almost extinguishing it and made sure it was out with some water.

Five minutes later Vince was in his sleeping bag and considered the talk. He had no idea what kind of guide he had, but he sure had a remarkable one and in some undefined way he actually liked the kid.

 

Afognak Island, Day 5

The next day of trekking, still to the northwest, had been grueling indeed for Vince, taxing all his stamina. Cagey was so kind to drop the tempo so that he was at least able to follow.

During their afternoon break they had a quick lunch of bread with cheese and some water. Between the bites Vince asked:

“You told me you are part Aleut yesterday. Which tribe?”

“Alutiiq”, Cagey answered, “The group you white men always mix up with the actual Aleuts, that live on the Aleutians. Actually, Alutiiq is the name the white man gave us. We call ourselves Sugpiaq. But hey, only partly, I’ve told you”.

“What’s the other part?” Vince wanted to know.

“White. I don’t know my father. He was one of the many season workers who came to Kodiak in the summer to work in the fish processing industry and then go back to the Lower 48 at the end of the season. Anyway, it seems this one had time left to make my mother pregnant. I always say, that every man in the Lower 48 between 30 and 50 can be my father. He could be from Texas, California, Georgia or New York. I don’t know!”

“But you feel yourself Alutiiq?”

Cagey nodded: “I was raised here. I was influenced by that culture and I wanted to know everything about it. I asked the elders in my village. Only one was willing to answer, to teach me things. He was the one, who taught me to understand the land and the language. OK, I perfected it in high school”. “In high school?” Vince asked surprised.

“Yeah, Kodiak High School offers classes in Alutiiq, so I followed them”.

“Where are you born?” Vince continued his questioning.

“In Ouzinkie, on Spruce Island”.

“You still live there?” Cagey shook his head, thereby prompting a: “Why not?”

The boy stared over the landscape around them and Vince could swear his eyes had something sad. “They didn’t want me there!” was the curt reply.

“Why not? Because you were…mixed?”

Cagey shrugged and rose, saying: “They just didn’t like me. That’s all! Come on, we must go on, otherwise we’ll be too late on the camping spot I planned”.

Another practical, very polite but undeniably rejecting remark ended another conversation.

They shouldered their packs again and got moving.

The camp was almost identical to the one of the night before, again with a small creek running along the patch of grassland on which their tents stood.

“How do you find these perfect spots?” Vince asked with delight.

“I told you, doc, I know the islands”, was the only answer.

But now they were on their first objective, a peak of about six hundred meters high that overlooked the forests of a small peninsula and the sea. They made themselves comfortable and starting spotting bald eagles, the job they had come for in the first place. Vince spotted only three of them, a disappointing number, given the knowledge that Kodiak had a breeding colony of about 1200. Was their number really diminishing or was it coincidence, something that could very well happen with birds, than just moved wherever they wanted?

“What’s the name of this peak?” he asked, when he wanted to make his spotting entries.

“Dome Peak, doc!” was the businesslike answer.

He dutifully jotted the sightings in his log and took his binoculars to continue the spotting. At the end of the afternoon, about five o’clock, Cagey called out:

“Look there, doc, behind you. At about four o’clock!”

Vince turned and looked in the indicated direction. A large white bird glided over the trees, coming in their direction. The professional part of Vince’s brain immediately processed it and determined it to be for what it was: an adult, male snowy owl, remarkably, since they were not that common on Kodiak.

“Ain’t it a beauty?” Cagey excitedly asked, but Vince didn’t hear it. Because the intuitive, unconscious part of his brain had a totally different reaction.

“Oh God, the big white bird!”, he screamed silently.

He flinched, his eyes went wide with fear, cold sweat streamed over his stern, his breathing became fast and shallow and he murmured:

“It’s looking for me! It’s coming to get me!”

The bird circled around, coming closer and closer. Vince was on the brink of losing all control over himself, but then the bird turned around and with another number of spying circles disappeared. His eyes saw the bird leave and slowly, very slowly he started to relax. He felt a hand tugging on his shoulder:

“Doc, doc! Are you OK?”

He looked from where the voice had come and stared hollow in Cagey’s concerned eyes:

“You need medical help? I can warn the Coast Guard to get you out of here! Talk to me, man!” “No!…No!” he stammered, “I’ll be fine. Just…just give me a few minutes!”

He sat down on a rock, feeling ashamed that he had gone so far out of control that Cagey had noticed it and that he had actually terrified the boy. Cagey sat beside him and asked:

“What was that, doc?”

“Eeeuhh, a snowy owl!” Vince answered, hoping to distract the boy’s attention away from his panicky reaction.

“Yeah, I know that, doc. I’ve seen them before. But I was talking about your reaction. Man, you had the color of a corpse when you saw that bird”.

“Oh, it’s nothing…really. Just felt a bit ill all of a sudden”, he answered weakly. With a forced grin he added:

“That’s what happens when you turn fifty and are trekking all those hills, thinking you’re still a young god”.

His mind came at peace.

“Funny,” he thought, “It didn’t grab me. It didn’t kill me. It just turned away. Might that mean it is no longer a threat to me? And why is that? Has something changed? Something I didn’t notice?”

After a few minutes he had recovered. He looked at Cagey and asked:

“You’ve seen them before, you said?”

The boy nodded.

“That’s remarkable. The snowy owl is not common for the Kodiak area”, Vince said, thinking out loud. “Ain’t it?” Cagey asked surprised, “Well, there’s even a pair of couples breeding up north!”

“No, impossible”, Vince exclaimed, “They breed north of the Brooks Range, not here”.

“Says who?” Cagey asked somewhat suspicious.

“Well, all surveys say it. Yes, they come here to hunt so every now and then, but they breed up north”.

Cagey just shrugged his usual shrug and said:

“Well, then it looks to me that we have a couple of birds over here that didn’t read the surveys. Because we have some couples breeding up north. I know what I see and I know what I say!”

Vince looked at him in disbelief.

“Suit yourself, doc. But I can prove it. If you want me to, I can take you to the spot where they breed. It’s not that far from here, I guess a half day walk”.

Vince considered it briefly: it would be sensational to prove that snowy owls were changing their breeding patterns. He looked Cagey in the eyes and asked:

“You’re not kidding me?”

The boy just shook his head.

“Then take me there!” he decided.

“Fine, but I suggest we call it a day for now. I want you to recover from whatever it was. With a good fresh fish on your plate, hot coffee and lots of sleep. Come on, let’s get back to camp”.

 

In the evening Vince was in his sleeping bag, but sleep was eluding him. He couldn’t understand what had happened in the afternoon. Oh yes, he could explain the panic attack easy enough: the years-long companion in his sleep had materialized in flesh and blood, in real time, the big white bird. But why had the bird turned away from him instead of attacking? What did it say?

His thoughts kept circling around that question but were unable to find an answer. In the end, his eyes fell close and before he knew it he was deep asleep…without the dream of the big white bird! Vince wasn’t the only one who was thinking in his sleeping bag. A few meters from him, in his own small tent, Cagey stared at the tent roof and wondered what kind of anxiety attack or whatever it was that had been, this afternoon.

He had been raised with the idea, that he was only a dumb Aleut boy. So, somebody like a scientist was a saint for him, placed high on a pedestal. In his mental world they had answers for everything while he only had questions. And this afternoon…a scientist fell off his pedestal, became much more human, with his own share of problems.

“So, scientist have nightmares as well?” he mused in silence.

He couldn’t find the reason why he wanted to do it, but he decided he was going to find out more of the guy. Because, in a way, he started to like him. The man was kind, had respect for him, his ancestry and his culture, was an avid lover of nature and he seemed to be a gentle man.

“One can never know what it brings!” he smiled.

But even young, tough wilderness guides get exhausted by days of trekking and the rest of his thoughts were drowned by an all-overwhelming sleep.

 

Afognak Island, Day 7

Vince crawled out of his tent, being waked up by the first rays of sunlight. He looked around, breathed in the fresh morning air and took a few minutes to enjoy the morning chorus of all the unseen birds in the trees around him.

Kalliq came to greet him and Vince patted the dog, asking him:

“Hi, boy. The master still asleep?”

At least he didn’t see Cagey, so he assumed that the boy was still asleep. But he was wrong! Not a minute later Cagey approached with bare upper body from the rim of Sitka spruces, having a towel around his neck. Vince couldn’t help it that admired what he saw: the sixpack, the curvaceous chest, the broad shoulders with smoothly muscled arms; a young, well-trained and hardened boy in the best of his years.

“Good morning, doc”, the boy said cheerfully, “Slept well, I hope?”

“Yeah, had a perfect night”, Vince replied with a smile, still unable to get his eyes torn away from the beautiful body, “How was yours?”

“Oh, it was OK”, Cagey answered, his eyes looking away from him in a clear demonstration of shyness. Vince wondered if it was a habit of the boy, this subtle but nevertheless very clear withdrawal.

“Where have you been so early?” he asked to change the subject.

“Taking a bath!” Cagey replied.

Vince looked around, but failed to see some facility where he could take a bath, because he sure needed one. Cagey seemed to pick up the questioning eyes and said with a smile:

“There’s a little pond with clear water just behind the trees. Water is a bit chilly, but it can be done. Why don’t you take a bath yourself? In the mean time I’ll make breakfast and coffee”.

Vince thought it to be a good idea, grabbed his own towel and gear and strolled to the little pond. He undressed at leisure, enjoying the cool morning air on his naked skin and stepped into the water. Immediately he started to shiver.

“Bit chilly?” he uttered with clattering teeth, “It’s fucking freezing!”

He sprinted out of the water, grabbed his towel to rub himself dry and dressed again, deciding on the spot that all hygienic activities would have to wait until he was back in the hotel, where he could take a long, nice warm bath to soak off all the sweat and dirt, accumulated during the first part of his wanderings.

“You had a very fast bath!” Cagey smiled when he returned.

“You bet!”, Vince growled good-humored, “That water wasn’t a bit chilly, it froze my balls off”.

Cagey laughed, showing his pearl-white teeth:

“We can’t have that, can we?”

Vince almost made the mistake to answer “I don’t need them anyway”, but he swallowed it just in time, avoiding embarrassing himself.

Cagey gave him a mug steaming-hot coffee and said with a twinkle in his eye:

“Here’s something to get them warm again!”

Vince was in doubt if he had heard it well. He looked the boy in the eyes and only saw the twinkle in them.

“What is changing?” he wondered in his mind, “What the fuck is changing?”

After they finished breakfast and had another coffee, they broke camp and shouldered their packs, moving out again, this time to the place where Cagey said snowy owls were breeding. Initially they went bit to the east, from where they had come, but then the boy turned due north. Vince followed Cagey and he started to admire the way the boy tackled the steep grades. Despite the thirty kilos pack he walked with the smooth grace of a young stag, each muscle perfectly tuned to the trying movements of climbing and descending. They skirted the shore of a lake where they took a short break to admire the sight.

“Does it have a name?” Vince wanted to know.

“Yeah,” Cagey said, “It’s called Hidden Lake. You see that top to the north?”

Vince looked to the north and he saw a mountain rising up out of the canopy of green trees.

“Wow”, he hissed, “That looks like one hell of a tough motherfucker!”

Cagey laughed and confirmed it by saying:

“Yeah, it is. It’s the Devilpaw Mountain, about six- or seven hundred meters high and damned steep on top of that. But we’re lucky, doc, we won’t have to climb it!”

“Because…?” Vince asked with questioning eyes.

“The owls have their nests at the base of the mountain. Which is pretty kind of them, I think. Saves us a lot of breath”, the boy said with a broad smile.

Vince saw the smile. Yes, it was broad, but it was also unbelievably beautiful.

“You’ve got a beautiful smile!” he heard himself say.

Again, the boy looked away, actually blushing a bit, while the smile became somewhat uncertain, but it was still on his face. Vince couldn’t believe he had said it! He didn’t understand what was happening to him. It was as if some kind of defrosting or melting up process had started in his mind and heart.

“What the fuck is changing?” the question came up again, the second time in one morning.

He had no time to ponder over it. Cagy rose and simply said:

“Let’s go. We’ve got snowy owls waiting for us”.

They shouldered the heavy packs and resumed their way to the north. They had only walked to the north for a short while when, all of a sudden, Kalliq stood and became some kind of statue within a second. The dog had his head high up, his nose sniffing vigorously and his ears pointed forward. The coat in his neck rose until it stood upright. When Cagey saw the dog’s changed attitude he froze as well, apart from the hand, that was stuck up in a stop sign.

“What is…”, Vince started.

Fast as lightning Cagey turned around, his finger on his lips. Not knowing what was wrong, Vince slowly walked towards Cagey and when he was close the boy whispered:

“Kalliq smells a bear!”

“Can it pose any danger to us?” Vince asked a bit worried.

“Don’t think so. The wind is from the north, so we´re downwind and he can’t smell us. Bears have bad eyes so he can’t see us. But bears also have very sharp ears…so, if you talk too loud, he can hear us. Get down on the ground. Maybe it shows itself!”

They went both flat on the ground. Kalliq was laid down as well, being a perfect “dead dog”. Somehow it made Vince apprehensive that Cagey took the rifle from his pack.

“Just in case!” the boy whispered with a reassuring smile.

They laid for about fifteen minutes, maybe longer. Vince felt that even looking on his watch might attract the curiosity of the bear. But then it showed, along the pebble bank of a creek. It was a female and it had a cub with her, that ran playful around her. Female or not, she was still mighty impressive in Vince’s eyes.

“We’re lucky!”, Cagey whispered, “Female Kodiak bear with cub. I can assure you: they are very bad news when you bump in to them unexpectedly. Just stay low, doc!”

The mother sniffed here and there along the watercourse, so every now and then scratching in the pebbles with her claws, as if she was looking for something edible. The cub, which Vince thought totally cute, just played around, rolling on his back and splashing through the water. But in the end, after their own progress to the snowy owl nesting area had been considerably delayed, the happy bear family moved on out of sight and, when they made sure that it was safe again, they continued their move to the north.

The delay made that they arrived in the area halfway the afternoon but it didn’t really matter because Cagey found the nests in record time in a clearing, covered with grass.

“It looks they have been here before”, Vince remarked surprised. He looked at the large nests and could only say:

“Yeap, they’re snowy owl’s nests. One can see it pretty easy since they are so exceptionally large. And the remaining feathers in them prove it!”.

“These were here for the last two years”, Cagey volunteered information, “But there are a few others just to the north”.

“Wait a minute…”, Vince stopped him, “Are you implying there have been breeding couples on Kodiak for two years?”

Cagey only nodded, thought it over and then added:

“Or longer, I don’t know. I saw them the first time two years ago, that’s all I can say”.

“Unbelievable”, Vince whispered, “And nobody found them!”

“Didn’t say so. But it is possible: this area is pretty remote”, Cagey answered.

The boy beckoned Vince to follow him and carefully went into the tree line, that surrounded the nests. He followed and found himself on another, slightly higher clearing, where he stood in surprise: about forty meters to his front was a nest with a female snowy owl and her three plushy-grey chickens. Vince knew that snowy owls didn’t mind human presence on a distance but that they got irritated when the nest is approached too close, so he stuck out his hand to stop Cagey from walking on towards the nest, but the movement was unnecessary, because the boy already stood still.

“You were right on two points!” Vince said softly.

“Two?” Cagey asked, not understanding.

“Yeah, first there are snowy owls breeding here on Kodiak. And secondly: you’re an expert guide. Every other inexperienced would walk towards the nest to get a better view”.

“I told you I would prove it”, the boy said, with another gorgeous, almost enticing smile. Vince took his camera with the long-range objective and started to make pictures. Then he jotted down the location, date and time of the sighting. When he had finished, he said with a smile of his own:

“Let’s get out of here and leave mum alone with her chickens!”

They left quietly and started the way back to their vantage point for another day of bald eagle spotting before the first part of the survey would be over.

 

Kodiak City, Day 9

The pilot called Matt had picked them up at Afognak and they arrived safely in Kodiak City. They walked together from the Kodiak seaplane base to Vince’s hotel. Vince had objected that Cagey wanted to accompany him to the hotel but the boy had insisted, saying with a teasing smile:

“One never knows how a rookie can lose his way, even in Kodiak City”.

“I’ll be damned”, Vince had replied, roaring with laughter. But he appreciated the gesture. In an undefined way he felt attached to the young guide. Oh no, not that far he was willing, or even able, to admit it, but he felt the boy had become somehow important. Another change he couldn’t explain. They said goodbye at the hotel entrance and Vince saw Cagey and Kalliq walk through the street to wherever they lived or to wherever their next job would bring them. He went in and checked in again with the desk clerk.

“How was Afognak, doctor Meredith?” the man asked with a smile.

“It was great, it was unimaginably beautiful”, Vince replied with whole his heart.

“Glad to hear. Next part is Kodiak I believe?” the man asked.

Vince just nodded and smiled when he said:

“But first rest!”

Before he went to his room he said:

“Oh, by the way. I’ll be here for about three days, writing reports and evaluating data. But I’ll be needing a guide after that. Can you tell the agency that I specifically want young Cagey as guide again for the next part!”

“Yes, sir. Can do!” the man simply said.

 

The first thing he did when he came in his room, apart from putting his heavy pack on the ground, was fall on the bed.

“Aaahhh”, he moaned blissful, “A bed, after all these nights sleeping on the ground”.

He rose and opened the window, letting the fresh sea breeze come in and then lied down again. He wanted to think over the days in the field, but fatigue of all these days of strenuous trekking overcame him and before he knew he was sound asleep. A dream formed in his head: he saw a boy and his faithful dog in a street. He saw them on the back, as if they were walking away from him. But he desired to see them from the front, in the face, as if they were walking towards him.

“Don’t go! Please come back!” he said in his dream.

Next he knew was, that he opened his eyes and stared into the hotel room. His first conscious thought was: “Another dream? Where has the bird gone?”

He propped his back against the bed headboard and pulled his knees against his chest, staring pensively. The dream went through his head again. It was clear who were meant with the boy and his dog: it were Cagey and Kalliq!

“I really don’t know what has changed”, he murmured, “But I feel somehow different. I feel…free. Why else do I dream about Cagey? Oh yeah…and Kalliq…”.

He smiled, as if the dog really mattered.

“I never dreamed about my midday dream boy, at least not in my sleep. Actually...now I think of it, I never dreamed about a boy or a man in my sleep. And now? Suddenly I do. What does that say? That I have fallen in love with Cagey?”

He pondered on it but the answer he found was inconclusive:

“Maybe I did. But…let’s suppose I met Cagey in downtown Seattle. Would I have dreamed about him then? Or was I too afraid to dream about him? What is that?”

His phone rang. It was the desk clerk:

“Doctor Meredith, you want dinner in your room or downstairs in the restaurant?”

“No, I’ll be down for dinner!”

“Very well, sir. Thank you very much!”

The phone call irritated him a bit. He was on to something, something that was happening in his mind and in his heart. But the thought was rudely interrupted by a question about his dinner, of all things!

“Damned”, he whispered.

He rose and prepared to take a bath before going down. He knew he needed one after all these days without. Oh well, apart from these thirty seconds in freezing water. It was crystal clear to him that he had something to think about in the coming days.

 

Kodiak City, Day 13

The three days break in the hotel passed with making preliminary reports, sending mails to the University about the change in breeding pattern of the snowy owl, taking care of and cleaning equipment and most of all with rest. Four nights of good sleep in a warm bed and the splendid food from the hotel kitchen had rejuvenated Vince and he felt he was physically ready for the second part of the survey.

But now he was just enjoying breakfast, sipping his third strong, hot black coffee. He had rebuilt his pack the evening before and it stood ready in the lobby. As soon as the guide would appear, he was ready to go. He hoped it was Cagey!

That was actually the only thing that had bugged him the last three days: he wanted to find out what had changed and why it had done so. But he was unable to find any conclusive answers. The only thing he was sure of, was that the dream of the big murderous white bird had disappeared from his sleep and that a dream about a boy and a dog frequently returned.

As almost two weeks before a waitress came to him and said softly:

“Your guide is waiting in the lobby, doctor Meredith!”

“Ah, yes”, he replied, “I’ll be there in a minute. Please tell him”.

“Of course, sir”, the woman said and disappeared to pass the message on.

He smiled when he realized he had some nervous belly aching. A bit tensed he drained his coffee cup, rose and walked to the lobby. To his relieve he saw, what he wanted to see: in the lobby Cagey was waiting for him!

“Hi, Cagey”, he greeted.

“Hi, doc”, the boy answered in a shy tone, a vague smile around his lips.

“How are you?” Vince asked casually.

“I’m fine”, came the reply, accompanied by the usual shrug, but this time undeniably meant to camouflage some kind of uncertainty by acting indifferently tough. There was a short silence, but then Cagey said, feeling clearly uncomfortable:

“I want to thank you”.

“What for?” Vince asked surprised.

The shrug to maintain an attitude was there for another time but despite it he said:

“My boss told me you specifically asked for me for the second part. Well, that’s pretty good news for a young guy who wants to make a living in the guiding business”.

“You’re a damned good guide and a smart boy on top of that”, Vince smiled. While saying so he wondered in silence if there was another reason as well, a reason that was still shrouded in the fog for himself.

“If you say so!”, Cagey answered surly, for the third time in a short period using his stance-enhancing shrug. There followed a kind of awkward silence that Vince knew to break by asking:

“I presume Kalliq is waiting outside?”

The beaming, beautiful smile came on the boy’s face and he replied:

“Kalliq ain’t the only one waiting. Matt is waiting at the seaplane base as well”.

Nodding that he understood the hint, Vince shouldered his pack and they started the second part of their trek.

 

They watched the seaplane disappear on the horizon after it had landed them on the shore of a small bay. Then Vince looked around. The landscape was different from that on Afognak. It was as rugged as far as the mountains were concerned, some of them even still showing white patches of snow. But there were less trees. Even the Sitka spruce didn’t seem to like the ground on Kodiak Island, because there were only some small clumps, not the vast forests like on Afognak.

The hills were green but, depending on the weather and the resulting light conditions, they could be as well a dark threatening grey. And all around the shores of the small peninsula were the grey waters of the Shelikof Strait. The sun shone, there a few dispersed white clouds in the air and the temperature was perfect for a hike.

They shouldered their packs and started moving to their planned observation point almost on the extreme northern limit of the Wildlife Refuge, from where they could observe the shores of two peninsulas, a small island offshore and the bays and waters between them. Cagey estimated it would take them half a day of walking to get there.

While walking behind Cagey Vince did not only admire the lean, trained body of the boy for its suppleness of moving, but he actually felt desire to touch and explore the young body. It brought him back to the same question that had kept his mind occupied since coming here: what had changed? Where had his life-time apprehension gone?

Climbing the next of many hills he kept an eager eye on the wiry body in front of him, being captivated by how it dealt with every obstruction on their path. His mind kept alternating between the new-found desire and the well-known self-restraint, in the mean time trying to figure out what was happening to him. He began to wonder if he would ever find that answer. Maybe it was a far better idea to just enjoy the change without bothering too much about the why.

He took a deep breath and felt the prickling fresh air fill his lungs. It was a lovely feeling. And, without knowing what caused his emotional landslide, it gave him the answer to his question: his change was caused by the area where he was. It seemed to radiate so much pure freedom, that his subconsciousness was infected by the virus of it, demanding freedom of its own! Its demand had such overwhelming power, that his conscious part, that had violently kept all the limitations and restraints, had finally yielded.

“So…”, he whispered, “I can be free! At last!”

A smile came on his face, a smile of liberation. Without missing a step he followed Cagey and had solved his problem at the same time.

“It only took me fifty years to do so”, he heard himself say.

He saw Cagey look around.

“You said something, doc?” the boy asked.

“No, nothing. Forget it. Was just thinking out loud!” he said somewhat embarrassed.

“Yeah, that’s what this island does to many people”, Cagey remarked, the beautiful smile on his face, “They start thinking out loud”.

Concentrating to avoid tripping over a large stone, Vince didn’t see the look in the boy’s eyes, that seemed to glow with hope and expectation.

After a strenuous six hours hike they reached their planned observation point and established camp. When they started working Vince remarked:

“Looks like a better place to spot bald eagles. I’ve seen five in a few minutes”.

Cagey laughed and said cheerfully:

“You should have come in March, doc”.

“Why that?” Vince wanted to know.

“You could have seen hundreds of them without even leaving Kodiak City. In March, at the end of the winter, they are starving and they invade the town by the hundreds, looking for food. They attack fishing boats to steal fish, fight over the last shred of salmon at the processing plants and generally make a nuisance of themselves”.

Then silence between the two of them came back and they continued their watching until the sun went down.

 

Kodiak Island, Day 16

The previous days were just other days in the field. They saw a fair number of bald eagles and all these sightings were dutifully jotted down in the log. The only noticeable event was when, somewhere during the morning of the day before, Cagey suddenly said:

“Doc, may I borrow your binoculars for a brief moment?”

“Sure”, Vince replied, “What’s up?”

“I think I see a sea otter offshore floating on its back. But it is too far off to be certain”.

Vince gave the binoculars and Cagey started spotting for the possible sea otter. It took just a few seconds before he said with a satisfied smile on his face:

“Yeah, it is. It’s a female. She has her puppy on the belly. Want to see it as well?”

Vince sure wanted that! He knew that sea otters held their puppies on the belly while floating in the water on their back but he never had the chance to see it for himself.

He took the binoculars from Cagey and started to look through them in the direction the boy indicated. He only saw water, lots of water, but no sea otter.

“You’re too far to the left”, he heard Cagey say.

Before he could adjust, he felt fingers on his right hand, gently directing him somewhat to the right and yes…there she was, the sea otter lazily drifting on her back in the water, a pup sleeping on her belly.

“So sweet!” he exclaimed, “So cute”.

Only then he noticed the fingers were still on the back of his hand, tenderly stroking the skin. He took his eyes from the binoculars and stared at Cagey without saying a thing. The fingers remained where they were, stroking the skin of his hand. He looked in the black eyes, that had an encouraging and shy glance in them at the same time. Vince felt an irrepressible urge to kiss the boy, but he controlled himself. It was not out of his old restraint and fear, but he didn’t want to push the boy.

“Eeeuhhh…doc”, Cagey said somewhat provocative, “The sea otter is there, on the water. Not here, where I am”.

With a smile Vince resumed studying the couple of animals on the water until he heard Cagey say:

“I’m real glad they`re back again”.

“Were they gone then?” Vince asked, not understanding what Cagey meant.

“Yeah, almost extinct”, came the answer.

“How that?”

“They were hunted for their pelts by the Russians and by us, the Alutiiq. We didn’t do it voluntarily, we were enslaved by the Russians and forced to do it. The black side of my tribe’s history”, Cagey explained.

“Russians?” Vince asked in surprise.

“Yeah, the Russians once owned Kodiak, but they sold the whole of Alaska to the States some time ago. And the Americans continued hunting the sea otters”.

He withdrew his fingers from Vince’s hand, but the enticing looks in his eyes remained for a few seconds longer. Then he rose and just resumed his work, cleaning up the camp site, as if no fingers had been tenderly stroking Vince’s hand at all.

It left him in turmoil. Did Cagey have the same feelings for him as he was rapidly developing for his young guide? It didn’t seem highly probable to him. Why should a young, good-looking boy fall in love with a guy of fifty?

The ever-logical scientist wanted to concentrate on the job at hand without amorous distractions and settled the matter for the time being with the thought:

“Let’s just wait and see how things develop!”

 

The morning started like all mornings. They had breakfast, a couple of mugs of hot, strong black coffee and they discussed a move to another observation point, map in hand. Cagey estimated it to be walk of a day and a half, but in his opinion it could be done and it looked promising enough for the job to decide to break camp and start moving again.

They made good progress during the morning. The weather was pleasant with a gentle breeze from the south and clear blue skies.

But shortly after midday Cagey stopped and looked to the sky with a worried face. Vince looked up, but only saw the same blue sky there had been. Then Cagey moved his head from left to right and back, repeating the movement several times.

“No bear, I hope?” Vince joked.

The boy shook his head, but his hand came up again as if he demanded silence. After a minute of intense listening he said:

“Don’t you hear it?”

Vince had no idea what he was talking about. He heard nothing and he said so.

“That’s just what I mean”, Cagey said, looking even more worried, “The wind is gone and all birds stopped singing. There’s a storm brewing, a heavy one, I think. Let’s get moving! Maybe we’re lucky”. They weren’t lucky. About half an hour after this short stop a sudden heavy downdraft wind rolled off the hills and threw Cagey from his feet. Vince was barely able to stay on his feet and, as far as the heavy wind blasts permitted him, rushed to Cagey to help him. Cagey shrugged off his pack and slowly rose.

“Everything OK?” Vince yelled in the howling wind.

“Yeah, no harm done. I guess just a few bruises”, Cagey answered at the top of his lungs.

He bent over to shoulder his pack again while Vince looked to the sky. Within seconds ink black clouds came rolling over the hills and at the same time the sluices of heaven opened and a deluge started falling down, soaking them both.

“Come on”, Cagey screamed against the howling winds, “There’s an old mine with an emergency shelter down the coast. Let’s go there!”

“How long is it?” Vince asked.

“If we’re lucky…half an hour”, Cagey answered.

“But we will be soaked by then!” Vince cried out in despair.

Despite the weather and their bad luck Cagey grinned:

“In case you didn’t notice, doc: we’re already soaked! Don’t think we can get more soaked than we are now”.

They started their walk to the shelter. It was the worst thing Vince had ever experienced. He couldn’t see a thing, water pouring in his eyes. He had never felt before his feet splashing in his shoes, but he was sure he didn’t like the feeling. He fell a little behind Cagey, but the boy urged him on with a: “Come on, doc, no time for sightseeing walks now!”

“But I can’t see a damned thing”, he replied in despair, “I can hardly see you!”

Cagey made a few steps back, reached out with his hand and took Vince’s hand. Walking side by side he guided Vince to the shelter by the hand.

It was the worst half hour Vince could remember, but finally they reached the shelter. They more or less stumbled in, sighing with relief once they were inside.

Vince swept the water from his eyes and looked out through the rear window. He saw nothing, apart from a wall of water coming down. On the roof the rain drummed a steady rhythm, so hard that they had to speak out loud to be heard. The storm tore at the little building furiously. Kalliq started shaking out his coat, spreading a halo of water droplets all through the small cabin.

Cagey started rummaging through his pack but he withdrew his hand from it with an irritated face: “All soaked wet, damned. Well doc, I guess we’re stuck here for some time until everything has dried”.

Vince shrugged and looked around the little cabin: it had two bunks, a small wooden table and some chairs, but as luck would have it, it also had a fireplace with some readily chopped firewood stacked beside it. He was relieved to see that the bunks even had blankets, since their wet sleeping bags wouldn’t be of much use for the coming nights.

In a short span of time Cagey had a fire burning. Slowly the warmth spread through the cabin, but as far as Vince was concerned, not fast enough. He started shivering and his teeth were chattering. Cagey took two lines out of his pack and spanned them between the two upper beds of the bunks. “Get out of these wet clothes, doc. You’ll get ill if you keep them on”, he ordered decidedly, already pulling his own shirt off.

His trousers followed and when the boy saw that even his boxers were drenched, he pulled them of as well. Vince stared at the beautiful body, not knowing if he had to look away blushing or admire it in fascination. Somehow it looked as the body of a sports woman, completely graceful but muscled at the same time with the muscles not bulging out but perfectly shaped in the gracious, slightly rounded forms. That was, apart from that one part between the boy’s legs.

He lingered with undressing himself, knowing full well that the boy was right. But the sight of the young naked body had caused the typical reaction any gay had: he had an erection! He felt deeply embarrassed to undress now.

“Come on, doc”, Cagey said encouraging, “I know how a guy looks like”.

Slowly Vince started to strip his wet clothes from his body. He found his boxers also completely waterlogged and knew damned well he had to pull it off as well. After some deliberation he just did it, immediately keeping his hand protectively in front of his aroused penis.

Cagey took one short look at it and smiled.

“Sorry”, Vince stammered, “Can’t help it. Just a physical reaction. You are so beautiful!”

The smile on Cagey’s face broadened and seemed to radiate warmth.

“Never mind”, he said, pulling two of the chairs in front of the fireplace.

Once seated Vince found the fire feeling great. The shivering diminished, but the shame remained. “How about a hot coffee?” he heard Cagey ask.

“If the coffee survived that rainstorm”, Vince remarked.

“Oh yeah, I always keep it in a watertight plastic container”, the boy said confidently.

Vince sighed and said:

“I hope that sea otter mama and her pup find a safe spot to overcome this storm”.

Cagey laughed out loud at his remark.

“Oh sorry,” Vince apologized ashamed, “That was a dumb remark!”

“No, it wasn’t”, Cagey objected, “It only shows what you are: a very kind and sweet man. But don’t worry, doc: sea otters are shrewd and they can handle it. I guess they found a nice secure spot on the shore”.

It didn’t take long before both sat side by side in front of the warming and drying fire, a mug of steaming-hot coffee in their hands. For a while there was silence, deepest silence, only the still falling rain could be heard on the roof. Both seemed to be searching for words. It looked as if Cagey found them first when he abruptly said:

“I was right. I sensed you were a Two Spirit!”

Vince looked at him, his face clearly showing that he didn’t understand a word of what the boy had said. Cagey saw it and smiled encouragingly, Then he started to explain:

“It is a designation we First Nations use for people who are…how do you call it?... have fluid gender distinctions. Like you white men label them as gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, transgender and the whole lot. We see it as that a person combines the male spirit and the female spirit in one body so we only have one label for it, covering them all”.

“How did you know I was gay?” Vince asked bewildered.

“Like I said, I sensed it. Like I sensed that you are a very sweet, tender man and that you are afraid of your being Two Spirit, so afraid that you push it away, thereby turning your own life into a hell”.

Vince shook his head. He understood the words the boy said, but he didn’t understand where the boy might have picked it up.

“What do you mean by sensing? How did you sense it?” he asked somewhat exasperated. He didn’t like it when people gauged him so easily, finding out his deepest secret.

“I don’t know”, Cagey answered thoughtful, “I just sense such things. You know, in the old days, before the Russians and the Europeans came, most tribes accepted and honored Two Spirits. They were simply a matter of life. And they were attributed higher powers, often making them shamans or healers. Maybe it means that Two Spirits tend to be more… sensitive. Anyway, it all ended with the arrival of the white men. Then they had to be invisible”.

“Are you implying…?” Vince started asking, not having the courage to finish it.

Cagey looked him straight in the eyes, a smile on his face that seemed to come directly from heaven or from the Eternal Hunting Grounds, no matter which religious label you gave it.

“Yes…”, he whispered, “I’m a Two Spirit myself!”

Vince felt an emotion he hadn’t known before, but of which he thought it had to be what other people called love. That is, he hoped that love was the desire to know another person completely, not only physically but also know, understand and share his feelings, his thoughts, his dreams and longings. Because these were the feelings he had for the young boy, that was with him in this tiny cabin. Anyway, he felt as if all restraints and fear, that had accompanied him since his puberty until his fiftieth year, were swept away from his mind.

“Is that why...how did you call it?...they didn’t like you in Ouzinkie?” he asked.

Cagey looked in the flames, a sudden sadness over his face and he only nodded.

“Like I said,” he said after thinking it over, “Two Spirits are supposed to be invisible now. I don’t know if my tribe accepted them in the old days. I’ve asked the elders but none of them was able or willing to answer. I guess it’s the result of the still-present Russian Orthodox influence”.

Vince was well aware of the Russian attitude towards homosexuality so he nodded in understanding.

“In the beginning I withdrew, trying to live my own life without bothering anybody,” Cagey continued, “However, they started to threaten me if I wouldn’t leave. They said they would kill Kalliq and beat me up and that kind of threats. So yes, I packed my stuff and went to Kodiak City. Not that it is much easier to be gay there, but it is easier than in the outlying communities. At least in the summer”.

“Why in the summer?” Vince asked curious.

Cagey grinned and explained: “A large part of the season labor are students from universities in the Lower 48 who want to make some cash during the holidays. Some of them are real cute and some of them are Two Spirit as well. I had something going on with one from California last summer. But it turned out he was a real jerk. At the end of the season he just left without saying goodbye. I guess he went back to his university and maybe even to his boyfriend, he already had before coming here, no doubt telling him how he missed him during those months. It hurt a lot…I realized I was just some sex toy for him. Well, I sensed he was Two Spirit and I was right. But I also sensed he was kind and sweet and that turned out to be a mistake. It won’t happen again!”

“But…you say that you sense that I am sweet and kind”, Vince remarked, making an effort to keep the tone off-handedly, “How can you be sure you’re not wrong again?”

Cagey looked at him, a shy and at the same time mysterious smile around his lips and said:

“I learn from my mistakes. I kept you at bay in the beginning to see how you would react. And you accepted it, so you must be a kind person, who cares for how others feel. Maybe even to the extent that you care more about what other people feel, than what you feel yourself”.

“Or simply afraid!”, Vince added.

“Yeah, that stroked my mind as well”, Cagey replied, “When I noticed that, I started to encourage you. Like eeeuhhh…stroking the back of your hand while you were studying the sea otter”.

He giggled and added:

“I deliberately gave you the wrong direction where to look so you had to adjust, giving me an opportunity”.

“You cunning little devil”, Vince cried out in mock anger.

Both laughed. Without warning Cagey brought his head closer to Vince’s. When their heads were only a couple of inches apart the boy looked at him, his black eyes smoldering like a wildfire and his lips already slightly parted.

Instinctively Vince knew what was coming. He noticed the extra boost of desire through his body and the old well-known fear in his mind.

“Do not fear when you’re with me. I won’t do you any harm”, Cagey whispered barely audible, as if he sensed the fright in the other man, “Just feel free, just be what you always wanted to be!”

The qualms left the second their lips touched in a passionate kiss. Vince was unable to find the reason for thinking it, but was certain that the fear had left him forever, just like the dream of the bloodthirsty white bird had gone before. He felt Cagey’s lips on his and with closed eyes he enjoyed every millisecond of the wonderful feeling of the soft, warm tissues touching each other.

Vince lived through a slide into an unknown world. Despite his age he had zero experience and he was at a loss what to do next to continue this blissful adventure. It seemed as if Cagey had anticipated that as well and he took over control, something to which Vince gladfully relented. He felt the boy’s tongue gently pushing in his mouth and reacted when his tongue started to greet the lovely intruder, both ending up in a delicate mating dance in the limited space of the mouths. Everything around them seemed to disappear: the still howling wind, the continuous drumming of the downpour on the cabin’s roof and Kalliq’s snug moan, when he stretched comfortably in front of the fireplace to enjoy the warmth. They were just the two of them, as if they lived in a vacuum, thoroughly enjoying the feeling of the tongues in their seducing ballet.

Cagey withdrew his tongue abruptly, leaving Vince with the feeling he had gone too far. But the boy kept his face close to Vince’s and panted heated:

“Let’s simply go to bed!”

The boy rose and took him by the hand, leading him to the bunks as if he had no will of his own. He burned with the fever of desire, but there was also a light nagging fear coming up in him. It was not his old fear of what he was going to do, but an uncertainty of how he would have to do it. He suffered from a mild kind of performance anxiety and dreaded the idea that he might fail.

Cagey pushed him on his back on the bed and climbed on top of him, their skins warm against one another, and started kissing him again. He felt the boy’s hard cock in his belly while his own dickhead signaled him for the very first time how it felt against a warm boy’s skin. Embarrassed Vince dropped his eyes and whispered:

“Don’t laugh. But...really…I don’t know what I have to do. I may be fifty, but this is really my first time”.

Cagey looked in his eyes with a heartwarming smile, kissed him softly and said re-assuring:

“I know! Don’t you worry about it. I’m your guide and I’ll take you through it step by step. Everything will turn out just fine. First I’m going to wake you up”.

“I am awake!” Vince objected puzzled.

“Just wait and see…and enjoy it!” was the only whispered reaction. It seemed as if Cagey wanted to confirm this by giving another tender kiss. Then he took Vince’s phallus in his mouth and started to suck it, softly in the beginning but becoming more and more forcefully, while his fingers massaged his balls. Vince just underwent it, his eyes closed, shivering with lust and delight when Cagey’s tongue played around the dickhead’s rim and the small slit.

“Ohhh…God! This feels so good!” he heard himself moan, knowing that every one of these words came straight from his heart. During his adult life he had lots of dreams of how it would be and how it would feel, but found out that the beauty of the reality surpassed his expectations.

Exactly at the moment when Vince felt his orgasm starting to boil up, Cagey stopped sucking him. He looked with gleaming eyes in Vince’s, smiled seductively and licked his lips.

“Tastes good, sweetheart!” he said softly.

Then he pushed Vince’s foreskin back as far as was still necessary, pulling it smooth so that the myriad of small blood vessels behind the tip was clearly visible. He opened his hands and starting stroking the tip and the tiny veins with only his fingertips, hardly touching them, almost sliding over them. It caused a loud moan, clearly proving it was a one-of-a-kind experience.

“Oh, … my love”, Vince panted, “This is simply sweet torture!”

Cagey giggled and said with a luring voice:

“I learned this from that flashy CalTec student last year. Oh well, it seems it wasn’t all lost time then!”

After having endured this tormenting treatment for a while Vince felt another urge to cum and he said so:

“Oh, my love…I’m cumming any moment now!”

“No, you ain’t”, Cagey said with a mischievous smile, “I’ve got other plans for that!”

The boy immediately stopped his tender stroking and repositioned himself, ending up sitting astride of Vince’s abdomen, his tight little ass directly hovering over the elder men’s hard cock. The boy’s hard dick stuck forward, softly dripping and with head shining, providing Vince with a very enticing outlook. He wanted to touch it, suck it…love it!

Cagey delicately grabbed Vince’s dick and pushed him against the small hole between his buttocks. With feverish eyes he uttered:

“Iterluni! Iterluni!”

Vince looked at him, not knowing what was expected or what he was supposed to do. Although his feeling of uncertainty had faded by the new experiences shortly before, it popped up again.

“Sorry”, Cagey panted, “I slipped into Alutiiq. I meant: come in!...Please, come in!”

“Oh yes! I would love that!”, Vince cried out passionately.

He pushed his tip in, gently, tenderly. The stimuli of warmth and softness sent to his brain by his oversensitive dickhead, moved him to the extreme, overwhelmed him, making him cry with joy. Slowly he entered the narrow tunnel, feeling every small muscle vibrating around his tip and his shaft, clamping them both as if they would never be allowed to leave again. Vince would have been perfectly content if he had to keep his dick inside the boy until his dying day. He cherished the feeling of the sphincter contracting rhythmically around his shaft. Cagey threw his head in his neck, eyes closed and uttered something in an unintelligible language, which Vince presumed to be Alutiiq again. Then the boy curved his back, pushing his abdomen and his dick further forward. His long black hair fell over his back, dancing around when he started bouncing on Vince’s dick. Not only his hair danced: his dick jumped up and down in the same rhythm. Vince grabbed the rock-hard phallus with two hands and started stroking it with his fingertips, at the same time beginning to thrust deep inside the boy. He was past all fear and was only thoroughly enjoying the experience, the one he should have experienced an odd thirty years before. It was as if he had thrown off his age and thrusted with the youthful vigor of a young boy, catching up on all those lost years.

After having almost reached his climax twice there was no way to postpone it a third time. With a roar he ejaculated in the tight corridor, something that made Cagey yell with delight as well. Not two seconds later he felt Cagey’s dick shake and shudder and the boy’s hot white juices came out blot after blot, landing on his stomach, breast and chin, the boy’s whole body shivering and trembling in the release.

Cagey let his body fall forward and started kissing him again. Their skins glued together by the already congealing sticky fluids on Vince’s stomach and breast, their tongues were dancing with one another again.

Then the boy looked at him, with eyes full of love and asked: “You liked it?”

“Yeah, sweetheart, I loved every second of it!” Vince panted, still catching his breath after all the strenuous efforts.

Cagey propped his head on his hand, supported by his elbow and said thoughtfully:

“You know…it’s kind of funny to love a person and have sex with him but not even know his first name”.

“Sorry,” Vice replied apologetically, “It went so fast I didn’t think of it. It’s Vince”.

He looked up, thinking briefly and then he said:

“But now I think of it: the same goes for me. I don’t know your first name”.

“Yes, you do”, Cagey said, “It’s Cagey!”

“No, it ain’t. When I asked you were Cagey came from, you said it came from K.G. But when I asked what K.G. stands for, you just clammed up like an oyster. So…my lovely boy, I still don’t know your first name!”

The boy smiled and answered:

“K.G. is what they made of my name in school. And if finally turned into Cagey. My real first name in Alutiiq is Kaganaq”.

“Beautiful name”, Vince reacted sincerely, “Does it have a meaning?”

“Yeah, it does. Kaganaq means Wolf”.

“Very nice”, Vince said with a smile.

They just laid together for a while. Then Cagey saucily suggested:

“Hey, Vince…you want another round?”

They recommenced their loving and erotic playing, extended it in a second, third and even fourth round, but then both were totally exhausted and wet with perspiration.

“Wow”, Cagey panted with clear admiration, “You may be fifty, but I’ve got the feeling you can even exhaust a young boy”.

Vince giggled and replied:

“Maybe I’ve got a lot to catch up on. But don’t tell around I will be needing three days to recover from it”.

Cagey snugged up against him and looked thoughtfully to the bed above them without speaking for a long time. Then he suddenly said:

“What I’m thinking about…and what I don’t understand…”

Vince looked at him, inviting him with his eyes to go on.

“Hey,” Cagey said hesitantly, “It’s just something I sense, what I’ve been sensing for a few days now. So, I might be wrong”.

Vince had learned enough about the boy’s sensing capabilities to question them, so he simply said: “Go on, what are you thinking?”

“Well…”, Cagey continued, “You find out you’re gay and you withdraw yourself, just as I initially did. But then you stay in that withdrawal mode. You don’t live as a gay. Or maybe I should say: you don’t celebrate that you’re gay. Why not?”

“Well,” Vince replied, “I’m from very small village in upstate Washington, where it is a very bad idea to yell around that you’re gay. Besides, I think my old man would have thrown me out of the house if he knew”.

“Really?”, Cagey said unconvinced, “I doubt it, if he would do that. But let’s assume you’re right. That explains your withdrawal during the days you lived there. But at some time you went to Seattle. And you kept living as a monk. Doesn’t make sense to me. Why was that?”

Vince thought it over but he was unable to find an answer to that question.

“I guess…”, he tried, “out of fear!”

“For what?” Cagey wanted to know, “You lived in Seattle so the opinions of the folks at home are no longer relevant. And your old man couldn’t kick you out of the house, because you weren’t living there. I hope you weren’t afraid that the Seattle police would arrest you if you were kissing a guy, would they?”

Vince shook his head, frantically looking for an answer to the question of what had caused that fear. He couldn’t find one.

“You know what I think?” Cagey asked softly.

“Tell me!” Vince simply said.

“I think that there was only person on this world who didn’t allow you to be gay”, the boy said matter-of-factly.

“Who might that be?” Vince asked, feeling some kind of agitation coming up as if he saw the answer coming.

“You!” Cagey said, “You yourself didn’t allow yourself to be gay!”

Vince felt the tears coming in his eyes. He sighed deep and with a choked voice he whispered:

“Thank you! You made a whole lot of things clear to me”.

“You’re welcome!” Cagey said with his angel-like smile, kissing him tenderly. Vince wiped the tears away, stared pensively to the upper bunk bed for a short while and then he said:

“So…I have been awoken by the wolf?”

Cagey giggled, kissed him on the tip of his nose and said:

“That’s such a sweet thing to say. But mind you: the wolf was also awoken in his den, that he sensed as being safe and secure”.

“Sensing is a good quality”, Vince said, “But there are other, more rational, things to consider as well”.

“Hush, darling”, Cagey said stern, putting his finger on Vince’s lips, “No scientific logical blah blah. When you’re with me, I only want to hear your heart speaking!”

“Promised!” Vince whispered.

“Then it’s OK”, Cagey said with his gorgeous smile, pushing another kiss on Vince’s lips.

The boy looked back to the bed above them again, as if another part of his thinking had still to be done, However, it didn’t take that long before he asked:

“Do you have to go?”

Vince considered it briefly, but the boy didn’t give him much time to think it over and insisted: “Vince, do you have to go?”

“Yes”, he answered truthfully, “At least for a while, a couple of months. I have to wrap up the report for the Wildlife Department, resign, transfer everything to my successor, sell my apartment and settle a number of things”.

“But…”, Cagey asked hesitantly, “would you come back to Kodiak when all that is settled?”

“It depends…if the incentive is luring enough!” Vince answered, deciding to just tell the truth, the way he felt it. Cagey resumed staring to the upper bed again for a few minutes. Then he asked: “Would a dumb Aleut boy be enough as an incentive?”

Vince looked him in the eyes and said, sterner as he intended:

“If that boy stops calling himself a dumb Aleut boy…yes, he would be!”

He saw Cagey blush with shame, so he continued more gently:

“That you’re Aleut is absolutely no problem for me. Why should it be? I mean: I learned great things from your Native ways these past weeks and I want to learn more. And more important: you’re not dumb, to the contrary: I think you’re very bright. But the most significant is, that I’ve learned that I simply love you, just the way you are!”

Cagey looked at him with shining eyes and said:

“Promised as well! Won’t do it again!”

Then he listened intently and remarked:

“It stopped raining. The storm is over!”

“I think we may call it our lucky storm”, Vince smiled.

“Yeah, you’re right. It was!” Cagey concurred.

He snugged up against Vince again and they just laid there in silence, enjoying each other’s presence, body warmth and body scents. In the background the fire in the fireplace crackled and Kalliq slept, snoring peacefully and so now and then barking softly in his dreams. It was all they wanted! Only after a long time Cagey looked up, his eyes wet with moisture and with a shy smile he whispered: “There is nothing more beautiful than just lying with the one you love”.

Then he kissed Vince and asked uncertainly:

“Will you really come back for me?”

“Hey, sweet boy, I wouldn’t want to miss the feeling you just described. So yes, I’ll be coming back. Promised!”

Cagey’s eyes started beaming again and he softly said: “Then everything is just fine!”

 

 

 

Kodiak Benny Benson State Airport, four months later

For the second time Vince Meredith felt the Alaskan Airways B737 touch down on Kodiak’s runway, but this time he knew he didn’t come as a mere visitor but he had come to stay. After he had written the survey report on the bald eagle in Kodiak the months before, he had resigned from his job as a university teacher at the University of Seattle, much to the disappointment of his direct boss, professor Magnusson.

“But, Vince, why are you doing it? Is it about money?” the old man had cried out in something akin to desperation.

“No, sir, money has nothing to do with it!” he had replied, “To put it bluntly…I found the love of my life there!”

The professor had stared out of the window in silence for some time. Then he took off his glasses, smiled and had only said:

“You know, my dear doctor Meredith, I can hardly call that a sustainable scientific position. But…it is the best reason I’ve ever heard!”

With Cagey being long periods in the wilderness, guiding around hunting parties, salmon fishing freaks and birdwatching groups, he had been in touch with him irregularly over internet and by phone and after each time they spoke with each other he had felt the excruciating pain of missing the boy. But after all was done what needed to be done in Seattle and after his furniture was loaded in a container for sea transport to Kodiak, he was finally able to board the flight to Anchorage.

Now he was nervous. Would Cagey be there, waiting for him? Or…did the boy have second thoughts and had he changed his mind? He would find it out in the next thirty minutes or so. His anxiety rose while he was waiting for his suitcase and backpack to arrive. He felt the light spasmodic tingling pain in his abdomen, the pain so typical for nervousness. Lots of packs and suitcases passed, but none of them were his. After about ten minutes he found himself alone in the luggage area, all other passengers having left. He was just about to ask an airport staff member when he saw his luggage appear. With relief he took it and went to the arrival hall.

When he entered the hall, he looked around. He recognized other passengers that had been on the same flight, mixed with people that had come to pick them up and all of them in animated conversation. But wherever he looked, there was no Cagey.

“Fuck!” he whispered, “I’ve been had! He changed his mind!”

Devastated he looked to the tile floor below him, fighting back the tears. Slowly it dawned on him that it had all been too beautiful to be true. Until he saw some turmoil from the corner of his eyes. People protested about something and he saw how some of them were pushed aside. A lean Aleut boy with long black hair fought his way through them and ran towards him, ending his sprint in a stormy embrace around his neck.

“You came!” Cagey whispered, tears in his eyes, pressing the first kiss on his lips.

“Of course I came”, Vince replied, choking his tears of joy, “I promised, so I had to come”.

“I didn’t see you”, Cagey said excited, “All these people came out, but I didn’t see you. So, I assumed you changed your mind about me...no, about us! I felt totally sad. I started crying, I really did! I felt so ashamed that I was between all those people, so I went to the back of them, out of their sights. And then…finally, you came out. My tears…they just changed from tears of pain to tears of joy. I’m so happy you are here!”

Vince felt another bear hug and another kiss.

“Sorry, I couldn’t change that”, he said, “My luggage needed ages to appear, so yes…I was a little late. You know, sweetheart, I felt the same when I didn’t see you. It really broke my heart. But don’t bother about it, it’s already mended again”, he added with a smile of huge relief.

Cagey looked in his eyes with the same smile, that had hit him directly in his heart like a lightning the first time he saw it and said:

“Doesn’t matter, you’re here…that is what matters!” They hugged and kissed another time, unaffected by the presence of all these other people around them.

“Come…”, Cagey whispered horny in Vince’s ear, “Kalliq is waiting in the car. Let’s go home! I want you to feel inside me!”

“You got a car?” Vince asked surprised.

“Yeah, man”, Cagey smiled proudly, “I make good money as a guide. So I could buy me a small used four wheel drive. Come on, let’s go!”

Defiantly looking around they left the airport hand in hand, chatting while they did so. Nobody noticed, nobody objected and nobody made any remarks when the Four Spirits walked through the arrival hall to the exit. It seemed as if the new winds had arrived on Kodiak as well.