Highway Eleven
I have plowed Highway 11 between Hearst and Longlac for twenty-two winters, and I can tell you it does not get prettier.
That night it was minus thirty-four with the wind, and the OPP closed the highway at nine. I brought truck four back into the depot with half an inch of ice on the wipers and a headache from squinting at nothing for six hours. The bay door went up slow like it always does. It’s older than my knees and it complains about the same things.
Kieran was under truck two when I pulled in. I could see his boots sticking out and one hand reaching for a wrench that was just too far away, so I climbed down and kicked it closer with my toe.
“Thanks,” he said from under the truck.
“Don’t mention it. Actually, do. Nobody thanks me.”
He rolled out on the creeper and grinned up at me. He’d come up from Sudbury in October, a good mechanic and a bad liar, and since then I’d learned his round face and his short dark beard better than I had any business knowing them. He’d unzipped his coveralls to the waist and knotted the arms around him, and when he sat up the grey thermal underneath pulled tight across his chest. I had noticed the thermal before. I’m fifty-two, not dead.
“Road’s closed,” I said.
“I heard it on the radio.” He sat up. “Pelletier went home at eight. Said his wife would kill him.”
“Pelletier’s wife would be doing the ministry a favour.”
He laughed, low and surprised, like he hadn’t expected to. “So it’s just us.”
I went into the lunchroom and put the kettle on, because the coffee machine was on thin ice. The lunchroom is a box at the back of the depot where nothing matches, and there’s a cot along the back wall for nights exactly like this. The window over the table was solid white, and you could hear the wind screaming around the salt dome.
Kieran came in wiping his hands on a rag and sat on the edge of the table instead of a chair, which I’ve told him about.
“You drink tea?” he said when I got two mugs down.
“Tim’s is for the road. Tea’s for in here.” I handed him one. “You’re not driving home tonight, you know that. Cot’s yours. I’ll take the chairs.”
He took the mug and didn’t let go of it right away, so our fingers sat together on it a second. It was not an accident. I’m not great at a lot of things, but I know when something isn’t an accident. I looked at him and he looked back, brown eyes, steady.
“Gus,” he said. “You’ve been looking at me since October.”
“I look at everybody. I’m the foreman.”
“You don’t look at Pelletier like that.”
“Pelletier looks like a boiled ham.”
He grinned. Then he stopped grinning and put the mug down on the table behind him, and I put mine down too, because I could see which way this was going and I wanted both hands.
Kieran slid off the table and put both hands flat on my chest. I still had the plow jacket on, open, with a red flannel under it and a Stanfield’s under that, because I’m not an idiot. He had to look up a bit to meet my eyes, not much, since I’m six two and he’s close. A guy at the Legion once told me I looked like Santa after a bar fight, and I watched Kieran’s face while his hands went down over my gut and thought maybe the guy had a point, and maybe Kieran didn’t mind.
“That’s a lot of layers,” he said.
“It’s minus thirty-four.”
He started on the buttons of the flannel and I let him. There was grease in the lines of his knuckles and I didn’t care. When he got it open he pressed his palm on the Stanfield’s over my belly, then slid it up to my chest and squeezed, and my cock got heavy in my work pants faster than it had in about three years.
“Fuck,” he said, quiet. “You’re built like a truck.”
“I’m built like a guy who eats in a truck.”
“Shut up, Gus.”
I shut up and kissed him instead. His beard was softer than mine. He kissed like he meant it, pushed up into me and got a fist in the front of my Stanfield’s to hold on, and I got my hands on his ass through the coveralls. It was a good ass. I’d noticed that since October too, usually when it was sticking out from under a truck. He moaned into my mouth when I squeezed, and I felt his cock hard against my thigh.
“You been thinking about this,” I said.
“Every day. You come in off the road all big and cold and stand there with your coffee and you don’t even know what you look like.” He pulled back an inch, red in the face. “I jerk off in the washroom sometimes. After you come in.”
That did something to me, I’ll be honest. I took him by the back of the neck, not hard, turned him around and bent him over the table with his back to my front, and put my mouth on his neck where it met the thermal.
“In my washroom,” I said in his ear.
“Yeah.”
“On company time.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“You’re not sorry.”
“No,” he said, “I’m not,” and ground his ass back against my cock, and I nearly forgot my own name.
I untied the arms of his coveralls and shoved them down to his knees. Under them he had navy long johns, old ones, and boxers under those. I said, “Christ, you’re like a Russian doll,” and he laughed and swore at me, and I pulled the whole lot down in one go.
His ass was pale and round and furred dark across the top, with goosebumps all over it. I spread my big hand across it and he shivered.
“Cold hands.”
“I was outside. That’s the job.”
“Warm them up on me, then,” he said, and I did.
I got down on one knee on that lunchroom linoleum, which is from about 1985 and belongs in a museum, spread him with my thumbs and licked him. He jerked so hard the table moved an inch and the mugs rattled.
“Oh fuck. Gus. Fuck, your tongue.”
“You want me to stop?”
“If you stop I’ll put sugar in your gas tank.”
So I didn’t stop. I ate him out slow, then not slow, tongue flat and then pushing into him. He tasted of soap and sweat, and he was making sounds I’ve got no words for, both hands flat on the table and his forehead down on his forearms and his ass shoved back into my face, saying my name like it was a swear word. I reached around and got hold of his cock. It was thick and short and hot and wet at the tip, and when I stroked it he about fell over.
“I’m gonna come if you keep that up,” he said.
“No you’re not. You’re gonna wait.” I stood up and my knee cracked like a rifle shot. “Stay there.”
I went out to the parts cage. In the first aid kit on the wall there’s a big pump bottle of glycerin lotion for chapped hands. I stood there in the cold bay with my cock trying to get out of my pants and read the label under the fluorescent light to make sure it wasn’t anything that’d hurt him, and then I took the whole bottle.
When I came back he hadn’t moved. He was bent over the table with his coveralls down around his boots and his thermal rucked up to his shoulder blades, and he looked back at me over his shoulder, face red, eyes dark.
“That’s hand cream,” he said.
“You want to drive to the Shoppers in Hearst?”
“No.”
“Then it’s hand cream.”
I got the jacket and the flannel off and shoved the Stanfield’s up over my gut to get it out of the way. I undid my belt and pushed my work pants and shorts down to my thighs, and my cock came out and slapped up against my belly.
He was watching over his shoulder. “Oh my God,” he said, and swallowed. “Okay. That’s a lot.”
“You want me to put it away?”
“If you put it away I’ll quit and go back to Sudbury.”
I pumped a big handful of glycerin and worked it into him with two fingers, slow, and he opened up for me like he’d been waiting since October, which I suppose he had. I’ve got thick fingers. He took two and then three, pushing back on them and breathing hard through his nose, and when I found his spot and rubbed it he said something in French I didn’t catch and probably couldn’t repeat.
“Please,” he said. “Gus. Come on. I want it.”
“Want what.”
“You know what.”
“I’m a simple man. Spell it out.”
“I want your fat cock in my ass,” he said, loud, into the empty lunchroom, “right now, you old bastard,” and that was clear enough for me.
I slicked myself and lined up and pushed in, slow. He was hot as a block heater and so tight I had to stop halfway and breathe with my hand flat on his back.
“You okay?”
“Fuck. It’s too big, Gus, I don’t know if I can take it all.” He was panting. “Don’t pull out. Don’t you even think about pulling out. Just go slow.”
So I went slow. I fed it to him an inch at a time and he took it, groaning, his fingers curled over the edge of the table, until my gut was resting on the small of his back and my thighs were against his and I could feel him squeezing around me every time he breathed.
“There it is,” I said. “That’s all of it.”
“Jesus Christ.” He laughed, shaky. “I can feel you in my throat.”
“That’s the tea.”
“Fuck you.”
“In a minute. You first.”
I started to move, long strokes all the way out and all the way back in, holding his hips. The table knocked the wall on every thrust and the mugs walked across it until one went over and spilled tea all over the Ministry of Transportation safety binder, and neither of us cared. Kieran was moaning on every stroke, a low steady noise over the wind and the buzz of the fluorescent tube, and when I sped up it went higher.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Harder. Come on, Gus, quit being polite and fuck me.”
So I quit being polite. I’m heavy and I put all of it behind my hips, and the table moved another two inches and he yelled. Not a bad yell.
“That what you wanted?” I said. “In my washroom, thinking about this?”
“Yes. Fuck, yes.”
“Thinking about the foreman’s cock.”
“All the time. Every fucking day. Oh God, it’s splitting me open.”
I reached around and he was dripping. I stroked him in time with my hips until he started shaking.
“Not on the table,” I said. “Not yet. Cot.”
I pulled out and he made a sound like I’d taken his lunch. I kicked off my boots and pants, which took longer than I’d like to admit, and got the Stanfield’s off over my head, and stood there in that lunchroom in nothing but wool socks, all fifty-two years and two hundred and sixty pounds of me. He’d toed off his boots and got out of the coveralls and long johns and was pulling the thermal over his head, and then he was naked too, the flush climbing up through the fur on his chest as he stood there, stocky and square, with his cock sticking straight out at me.
He looked me up and down. “Fuck. Look at you.”
“Don’t. I’ll get shy.”
“You’ve never been shy in your life.”
That’s true, actually.
The cot is army surplus and older than he is. I sat down on it carefully and it held, and I lay back with my shoulders against the wall and my feet on the floor. He climbed on and the cot groaned. He straddled my hips and put both hands on my belly and rubbed it slow for a second, with this look on his face.
“You like the gut,” I said.
“I love the gut.”
“Good. It’s not going anywhere.”
He reached behind himself, took hold of my cock and sank down on it, all the way, with a long breath and his eyes shut. I put my hands on his thighs and felt the muscles in them working.
“Oh fuck,” he said. “Oh fuck, that’s deep.”
“You’re doing the work now. I’ve been driving all day.”
“Lazy old man.”
“Senior. The word is senior.”
He started riding me, slow at first and then finding it, rolling his hips and grinding down. His cock bounced on my belly and left wet marks in the hair. I got my hands on his ass and helped, lifting him and pulling him down, and pretty soon he was bouncing hard enough that the cot legs skidded on the lino.
“This thing’s going to break,” I said.
“Then I’ll fix it. I’m a mechanic.” He leaned forward with his hands on my chest, squeezing, and fucked himself on me. “God, your cock. Your fucking cock, Gus. I’m so full. I love it. Don’t stop.”
“I’m not doing anything. That’s all you.”
He laughed and it turned into a moan halfway. I couldn’t take much more of that. I sat up with the cot complaining the whole way, got my arms around him and rolled us so he was on his back and I was on top, still in him, and that cot has never been so tested. I hooked his knees over my arms and leaned down on him with all my weight and started fucking him properly.
He grabbed my shoulders. “Yes. Like that. Oh fuck, like that. I can’t take it, I can’t, don’t stop.”
“You want it?”
“Give it to me. Fill me up. Please.”
I pounded him with short hard strokes, my gut slapping against him and the cot shrieking under us like it was calling for help. His face was screwed up and his mouth open and he was chanting my name. I got a hand between us and took hold of his cock and it only took about four strokes.
He came with a shout, all up his own chest and into his beard, and clamped down on me so tight my vision went white around the edges. I lasted maybe ten more seconds. I shoved in as far as I could and held there and came with a groan that probably reached the salt dome, pumping into him, my whole body locked up over his.
Then I sort of lay down on him. All of me.
“Gus,” he said after a bit, muffled. “You weigh as much as the truck.”
“Truck’s heavier.”
“Barely.” He didn’t push me off, though. He put his arms around my back and held on, and I could feel his heart going like a jackhammer under my chest.
The washroom at the depot has one fibreglass stall with a water heater the size of a lunchbox, and we stood in it anyway, which was a lot of man for one stall. I soaped his back. He soaped my chest and took longer than he needed to. He still had his come in his beard and I got it out with my thumb, and he looked at me funny.
“What,” I said.
“You’re just nicer than I thought.”
“Don’t tell anybody. I’ve got a reputation.”
The hot water ran out after six minutes, which is a depot record, and we dried off with shop towels and went back to the lunchroom. I put my Stanfield’s back on because it was, as I keep saying, minus thirty-four. He put on my flannel. It came down to the middle of his thighs.
“That’s mine,” I said.
“You can have it back in the morning.”
I made more tea, since the first round was in the safety binder, and we sat on the cot, which had survived, with our backs to the wall and a grey wool blanket over our knees, listening to the storm try to lift the roof off the salt dome. I’ve heard that sound for twenty-two years. It was different, sitting there with him. He leaned his head on my shoulder and I let him.
“They’ll open the road at six, probably,” I said. “And Pelletier’ll come in at seven and see you in my shirt.”
“I’ll change.”
He was quiet a second. Then he said, “Is this a one-time thing? Because of the road?”
I’m not a speech man. I drank my tea and thought about how to put it.
“Kieran,” I said. “The road closes about thirty times a winter. And somebody’s always got to stay on nights.”
He turned his head and looked at me, and then he started laughing, that low surprised laugh, into my shoulder, and I felt it in my chest.
“Get some sleep,” I said. “I’ll wake you when the plows go out.”
He didn’t sleep. Neither did I. Around three he put his hand on my belly under the blanket, and around three-fifteen we found out the cot could take it twice.