Arctic Roots - 15. Roughing It

The sun rose too early in the morning in the Arctic Circle. Axel nudged his cub in their big double sleeping bag shortly after the sky began to brighten and pressed his morning erection against Adam’s rear. Adam yawned and raised his leg, giving his Papa easier access.

Axel pushed in slowly, and the pair began a magnificently slow morning fuck. Axel kissed the back of his cub’s neck as he pumped his rear at a leisurely pace, reaching around to grasp Adam’s cock in his fist and stroke it in time to his sensual thrusts.

“Ah, Papa,” Adam cried out, “You’re going to make me come!”

“Shh!” Axel said softly. “Don’t wake the others.”

Adam muffled his cries with his pillow as he roared his release into his Papa’s hand. Axel bit down on his cub’s shoulder as if he was turning him for the first time and pumped his own load into Adam’s rear.

Axel liked his paw clean before licking the bite marks on Adam’s shoulder, and then carefully pulled himself out of his cub’s backside.

“Well, good morning to you too, Papa,” Adam said. “What time is it anyway?”

“I think it’s about 4:30 in the morning,” Axel replied. “The café opens at 5:00, so that gives us time to clean up and get packed before breakfast. I’m figuring about two days of off-road travel between the Toolik Field Station and Atqasuk, but it’s going to be a lot slower-going than driving on the highway. We have about a two-hour drive to get to Toolik, so I’d like to get going by 6:00 at the latest.”

Spurred on by the reward of a hot breakfast buffet, the two bears sprang into action and had their campsite torn down and packed back up in about twenty minutes. Enough time to get themselves washed up the best they could in the café restrooms before the dining room opened for breakfast.

After getting the story of the end of his wrestling days with Lenny off his chest, Axel was feeling much better, and ate heartily, making up for the calories that he’d missed out on the night before.

The cook chose the worst possible morning to wake up with a hangover, and she worked frantically to keep up with the two bears and the few other diners who watched the pair eat with amazement. No sooner had she put out a fresh pan of scrambled eggs when the pancakes were all gone. Bringing out a new supply of pancakes, she found that the bacon pan was empty. Rushing out more bacon revealed that the French toast supply had been wiped out.

This continued for a good forty-five minutes, until the bears overheard the cook screaming at the owner in the kitchen.

“That’s it! I can’t stand it anymore. Either those two behemoths leave or I’m quitting and moving to Palm Beach where the customers may be old, but they eat like human beings, not ravenous bears!”

“I think that’s our cue to leave,” Axel said, shoving the last few pieces of bacon in his mouth and wiping his face with his napkin.

“Like I said yesterday, Papa,” Adam replied, “When you go to a buffet, you don’t stop eating until you make the cook question their life choices.”

Axel paid the bill, with a generous tip for the cook, and they were back on the road by 6:00 as planned. As they sped north through the mountains, Axel took pity on his cub and allowed him to pick the satellite radio channel for a change.

Adam flipped from one station to the next, listening carefully for a few seconds before moving on. He finally paused when he reached a channel playing some up-tempo music with a syncopated beat, a horn section, and a lead with a gravelly voice singing about a girl leaving Green Bay on a Vespa scooter.

“Oh, I really like this music, Papa,” Adam said. “What’s it called?”

“Oh, Lord, Cub,” Axel said, shaking his head, “It’s called Ska. This means you’re a Ska Kid. A Rude Boy. A Moon Stomper.”

“Are those good things?” Adam asked.

“It means that if you’d been a human twenty-something back in the ‘80s, you would have hung out at a lot of underground dance clubs, wearing a black suit with checkered suspenders, a skinny tie, and Doc Marten boots, smoking clove cigarettes… and getting your ass kicked by Metalheads like me.”

Adam grinned.

“Come on, Papa. Listen to that beat, it grows on you! Makes me want to dance.”

“Yeah, it’ll grow on me all right,” Axel grumbled, “Like a toenail fungus. But I said you could pick the music today, and if it’s Ska my Mate wants, Ska my Mate gets.”

Adam smiled even wider and turned up the volume bouncing along with the beat. It did not escape his attention that Axel had just referred to him as his Mate again, and it was the first time he’d said it without the two of them lying in bed.

After a couple hours of driving, they reached the Toolik Field Station. They took a brief driving break to talk to the field researchers at the station and confirm their overland route to Atqasuk. The lead biologist and geologist reviewed their plan and confirmed that as long as they stuck to the marked snowmachine trails, they shouldn’t have any problems, unless the pair encountered the permafrost collapse that the scientists were currently there studying.

“It’s sort of like a sinkhole and it’s called a thermokarst,” the geologist said. “You’ll get a pocket of tundra that due to climate change suddenly climbs just above the freezing point and begins to thaw. When that happens, the ground in that area rapidly collapses, literally sinking down several feet or more, and the thawing groundwater rises to the surface. Within a matter of hours, what was an area of solid, flat tundra becomes a shallow lake.”

“So, if we don’t freeze to death first, the ground could just swallow us up whole,” Adam replied. “It just keeps getting better and better up here in the Arctic Circle.”

“There’s still time for us to call Fergie and have him fly us to Atqasuk instead,” Axel said with a sly grin.

“Fuck no,” Adam said, getting back in the passenger seat of the truck. “I’ll take my chances with the frostbite and man-eating sinkholes.”

The scientists escorted them on ATVs to the edge of the Field Station property and showed them the first of the trail markers, which was an eight-foot tall tripod of poles, marked with a numbered sign and reflective tape. In the distance, they were able to see the second marker as well.

“Just go in a more-or-less straight line in between each marker, and you’ll do fine,” the geologist told them. “Watch for intersections where multiple trails converge, and don’t start angling north for at least a day, or else you’ll run into rivers too wide and deep to drive across.”

They thanked the research team for their help and started out across the frozen tundra, aiming for the first in an endless string of trail markers.

Adam kept the Ska cranked in the truck’s sound system, and Axel had to admit that the bouncy rhythm of the music paired well with the bouncy terrain as they drove along. There were no trees this far north, just low grasses as far as they could see.

After a couple of hours of driving, they ran into the first small stream that they would have to cross. Adam shed his clothing and jumped outside, quickly changing into his bear form. He waded out into the middle of the stream and finding it neither deep nor fast-flowing, he quickly ran back to the truck and shifted back to his human form, giving Axel the thumbs-up to cross.

They kept the mountain range on their left for a full day, crossing the occasional stream or shallow river, sticking to a straight path between the markers except when forced to detour due to unmapped thermokarst lakes. After driving for twelve hours, mostly nonstop, Axel decided to call it quits for the day. There would still be another four hours of daylight before the land would slip into a four-hour period of twilight, but he was starting to feel the weariness of driving over the rough terrain.

The selected a spot that seemed like it was at the top of a gradual slope and would have less of a chance of becoming a thermokarst lake while they slept, and they set up camp. The majority of the food that they had brought along was in the form of dehydrated meals. Adam boiled a pot of water and fixed them each a package labeled beef stroganoff with noodles that said it was supposed to be two servings. Axel looked at the meager portion of rehydrated food within the little silver pouch and gave his cub a look that suggested he must be delusional, so Adam quickly added three more packages apiece to their meal. In all, they each had two servings of beef stroganoff, chicken and dumplings, chicken fajita bowls, and chili mac with beef.

“If we run out of food before making it back to Coldfoot,” Adam said, “I’m assuming that you are going to take your role as Papa seriously and allow me to eat you to stay alive.”

“You can eat me right now, Cub,” Axel replied, rolling onto his back and rubbing his crotch suggestively while letting out a loud belch. “Why don’t you see how many licks it takes to get to the creamy center?”

“Bad Papa!” Adam yelled, and threw a cardboard canister labeled ‘scrambled eggs & bacon, 9 servings’ at Axel’s head where it bounced off and rolled a few feet away on the grass.

“Well,” Axel said, picking up the can and tossing it back, “At least I know you won’t have to eat me for breakfast tomorrow. How many of these do we actually have?”

“Let’s see. If we have that can of eggs and bacon and a can of granola with blueberries and milk that says it’s 20 servings worth for breakfast tomorrow, and if we keep eating as much as we ate tonight for every dinner, we should have enough to last us… almost two weeks.”

“No problem, Cub,” Axel replied. “We’ll be in Atqasuk by tomorrow night, and even if we spend a week there to get in touch with the Old Man, that sill gives us a few days’ worth of supplies to get us back again.”

“If you say so, Papa,” Adam said. “In the meantime, I’m going to try to decide if your right or left drumstick would be the tastier choice.”

By 11:00 pm, the sun finally dipped below the horizon, and they were treated to ninety minutes of twilight. The sky wouldn’t grow dark enough for the brightest stars to come out until well after midnight, but they tried to get some sleep anyway.

After they got undressed and snuggled together into their double sleeping bag, Adam turned to Axel one more time.

“Papa, during those fifty years when you were managing that gay bar for the wolf lycans,” he said, “What did you do for fun when you weren’t working or going to Green Bay to fuck rock stars in the VIP room backstage?”

“Well, Cub,” Axel replied, “Running the bar was a lot of work. At the beginning, I used to have a bunch of gay wolves to help out around the place, but eventually they all moved on and I had to replace them with wereboars. I had my own little apartment in the back of the building that could only be accessed through the office behind the bar. I mostly worked seven days a week, only taking time off to sleep from 4:00 in the morning after we got the last of the customers out for the night until just before noon when we opened back up for the day. Back in the 70’s and early 80’s, there was just one day a week that I took some time for myself.

“We were always busiest on Saturday and Sunday nights, so to recharge for the week, I would clock out on Friday nights at 10pm or midnight, depending on how rowdy the crowd was, and I’d go to bed early, getting up at 7am the next morning. When I’d get up, I’d pour myself two boxes of Froot Loops cereal into a big mixing bowl with a half-gallon of milk, and then I’d sit on my couch in my bathrobe and watch Saturday morning cartoons for five hours straight.”

“Cartoons?” Adam exclaimed, “Like Bugs Bunny and Mighty Mouse?”

“Yeah, but I always liked the Hanna Barbera cartoons the best. Yogi Bear, Scooby Doo, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Snagglepuss, Hong Kong Phooey…”

“Wait, wait…” Adam interrupted, “Snagglepuss? Hong Kong Phooey? It’s sounds like you’re just making up a bunch of ridiculous shit.”

“No, I’m serious,” Axel replied. “Snagglepuss was an effeminate pink cougar who had catchphrases like ‘Heavens to Murgatroyd’ and ‘Exit stage left’. They never came out and said that Snagglepuss was gay, but… he was pretty fucking gay for a Saturday morning cartoon.

“Hong Kong Phooey was a mild-mannered dog who worked as a janitor in a police station, but when there was trouble, he’d jump into a filing cabinet and emerge as a crime-fighting kung-fu master, dressed in a robe and a mask. The best thing about Hong Kong Phooey was that he was voiced by a famous black actor named Scatman Crothers.”

“No offence, Papa, but that sounds like a king-sized casserole of racist nonsense,” Adam replied.

“Oh, it was!” Axel said. “It was a golden age before the era of 24-hour television and two thousand channels. Everybody got about four or five channels, depending on how good the rabbit ears on top of your TV were, and cartoons were only aired on Saturday mornings. Back then, cartoons could get away with all kinds of crazy, racist, violent, homophobic shit, and as long as the kids were entertained for thirty minutes at a time, nobody seemed to give a fuck. When they try to edit down the old cartoons for today’s standards to get rid of all the offensive shit, a half-hour show ends up lasting five minutes.”

“So that’s why you always call Councilman Gunnar ‘Yogi’,” Adam said.

Axel nodded. “But the cartoons and cereal were just the first half of my special day. At noon, the local Wisconsin TV station would switch over to showing classic creepy horror movies. Since my life was a creepy horror movie already, I’d get dressed and run down the road to the truck stop at the freeway exit and get four of their Big Mother Trucker burgers to go, and I’d sit at the bar eating burgers and doing the weekly paperwork all afternoon until things started getting busy.”

“I wish I could go back in time and see you sitting in your bathrobe, eating sugar cereal and watching cartoons on TV like a little kid,” Adam replied.

“For the longest time, that was the only joy in my life,” Axel said. “As crazy as it seems, those cartoons are the only things that kept me sane and prevented me from becoming an even bigger raging asshole than I already was.”

“I’m going to remember this conversation when we’re finally back home and you’re in one of your famous pissy moods,” Adam said. “I’ll keep a secret stash of Froot Loops and pull up some old cartoons and let you chill out in your bathrobe for a few hours.”

“The only thing that could possibly be better than Froot Loops and old cartoons in my bathrobe would be Froot Loops and old cartoons in in my bathrobe while getting one of your expert blowjobs!” Axel replied.

“Oh Lord, Papa,” Adam sighed. “Go to sleep, you horny old bear!”

****

At 4:30 am the sky began to brighten as it did the morning before in Coldfoot, and by 6:00 am the sun was back above the horizon.

“Up and at ‘em, Cub,” Axel said, “If we haul ass as well today as we did yesterday, we’ll be in Atqasuk before the sun goes down again.”

“I just hope that the natives are friendly to outsiders and have a heated bathroom with a toilet that flushes I can use,” Adam replied, stretching his achy muscles. “After last night’s freezing squat over a trench in the tundra, I probably would have lost one or both of my balls to frostbite if I wasn’t such a fast healer.”

“Oh no! I can’t have a neutered Cub!” Axel said with mock concern, “That wouldn’t do at all!”

“Yeah,” Adam replied with a playful kick at his Papa, “Or else what would you have to suck on when you need to shut your smart-ass mouth hole!”

“Hmm, nice burn first thing in the morning,” Axel commented with approval, “Trained you well, I have.”

Axel prepared a pot of coffee as Adam rehydrated the nine servings of scrambled eggs with bacon and twenty servings of granola with milk and blueberries that they had discussed the night before. They ate as quickly as possible and then broke down the campsite.

“Good job picking a location that didn’t turn into a freezing lake to drown us in our sleep, Papa,” Adam said as they loaded the last of their equipment.

They headed north, continuing to follow the tripod trail markers. The rivers were becoming more frequent the further they drove, forcing Adam to occasionally scout along the riverbanks in his bear form, looking for a safe place to cross with the truck. The more they neared their destination, the more the tundra was dotted with a myriad of small lakes, forcing Axel to drive in wide curving arcs around each to stay on the marked path.

When they’d been driving for about ten hours, Adam pointed to an object sticking up above the horizon.

“What is that?” he asked.

“That’s an airstrip’s windsock,” Axel replied. “We’ve made it.”

They skirted around the raised landing strip, and with a bump were back onto an actual gravel road once again. They saw the cluster of fifty or so homes and buildings that made up the village of Atqasuk. As they passed the first few structures, people emerged, following their truck as Axel slowly drove into the middle of the small town. He stopped at the intersection between what appeared to be the school building and the densest concentration of homes. More of the natives emerged from their houses, suspiciously eyeing the big black truck that had accomplished the near-impossible task of driving overland into their village.

Axel and Adam both exited their vehicle at the same time, and the assembled crowd gasped at the sight of the two seven-foot-tall white men, so muscular that they looked nearly as wide at the shoulders as they were tall. Several men in the crowd moved to the front and raised guns at the giant intruders.

“We mean no harm,” Axel said, raising his hands in front of him. “We’ve come in search of your ancient Spirit Bear. His name is Matthias, but you may know him as Matti.”

One of the men lowered his gun slightly and replied to Axel.

“What do you want from the Bear? He is our protector and our guide. Before he came to our village sixty years ago there were only thirty of us left. Now we number two hundred fifty strong. We owe the Bear our very lives.”

Alexei nodded and stepped forward to speak to the man.

“If you can contact the Bear, we have a message for him. Tell him… tell him that his Cub has returned. Alexei has come home.”