Ridge Road, Chapter 3 · Past Denver

The gate guard at the Commerce City receiver was asleep in a lawn chair, and the dispatcher inside looked up when Hank walked in and said “Doyle” like she was reading it off a plaque.

Sam stayed in the truck while Hank went in with the paperwork. He had Walt’s text open on his phone and he’d read it so many times the words had gone strange. He never kissed the other three. Out the windshield the Front Range stood up behind the warehouses, blue and enormous, with snow already on the top third of it, and he couldn’t enjoy any of it. He had rule six to think about, and a man in Tulsa who could watch the truck on a map.

When Hank came back out he walked the trailer into the drop with a yard hostler, then showed Sam how to crank down the landing gear, low gear first, counting the turns. Sam did the cranking. His shoulders burned by the end of it. Hank watched with his thumbs hooked in his belt loops and said “Good,” once, and Sam felt it all the way down to his boots.

The yard hostler, a wiry guy with a cigarette he wasn’t allowed to light, leaned out of his cab window and grinned. “He’s letting you touch the gear? Last fella he let that close, I think he ran out of road in about three weeks.”

“Four,” Hank said, without turning around.

“Four. That’s right. He counts, your boss.” The hostler winked at Sam and pulled away in a clank of gears, and Sam stood there with greasy hands and a stupid warm feeling that he’d just been told something he wasn’t supposed to be glad about.

“Reload’s in Aurora at six tomorrow morning, and then we point her east,” Hank said. “Until then we’ve got a tractor with no trailer on it and a long day. I need to sign a couple more things.”

“Can I make a phone call first?”

Hank’s eyes went to the phone in Sam’s hand and stayed there a second.

“Rule six says you don’t lie to me. It doesn’t say you can’t call a man.” He nodded toward the corner of the building. “Go on.”

Sam walked around the end of the warehouse, out of sight of the cab, and stood in the shade of a dumpster enclosure with the wind pulling at his quarter-zip. Walt picked up before the second ring.

“Ortega.” The voice was dry and slow, like a man chewing something he’d already decided he liked. “I was starting to think Colorado ate you.”

“You said call before Salina.”

“I did. Salina’s four hundred miles behind you, so you’re ahead of schedule. Answer my question first. Did he kiss you?”

Sam shut his eyes. “I kissed him.”

The line went quiet, and then Walt laughed, a low rusty laugh that turned into a cough and went on for a while. “Well, damn. You did that. In the sleeper.”

“At Limon. He kissed me back.”

“I’ll bet he did.” The laughing stopped. “Listen. I’m not going to tell you all of it. It’s his to tell, and he tells it badly, and I’d tell it worse. But I rode with that man eleven years, Ortega. Eleven years in the same bunk, and you can work out for yourself what I mean by that. And in all that time he never kissed me once, not till the day I got on the bus in Salina. I was standing in the lot with my bag at my feet and my knee swelled up like a ham, and he kissed me like he was signing for a delivery.”

Sam leaned against the enclosure wall. The metal was cold through his quarter-zip.

“That’s why he never kissed the other three,” Walt said. “He kissed one man in his life that he let go. He’s been driving men back to that same lot ever since, and saying the one thing he knows how to say, and waiting to see if the next one picks up his bag.”

“What’s the one thing?”

“That’s Salina’s, not mine.” The dry voice softened. “He wasn’t cruel about it when I left. He’s never been cruel. He just can’t ask a man to stay. He figures if he asks and you say no, he drives home alone. So he doesn’t ask. He sets you a test and watches.”

“What’s the test?”

“Hell, I don’t know. You’re the one in the truck.” Another cough. “Come see me at the yard when you’re back. One way or the other. And Ortega?”

“Yeah.”

“If you do stay, he’s going to tell you he wants to wait on something. Let him. He’s usually right about the what. He just gets the why wrong.”

The line clicked. Sam stood there with the phone against his ear until a forklift backed out of door seven, beeping, and then he went around the corner. Hank was leaning on the front fender of the Peterbilt with his reading glasses stuffed in his shirt pocket and his face turned up toward the mountains.

“That him?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d he tell you?”

Sam told him. All of it, in order, even the part about the ham. Hank’s jaw tightened once at signing for a delivery and then went still.

“That’s about right,” Hank said when he was done. “He always did say it better than I do.” He pushed off the fender. “Get in. Once I’m signed out we’ll go up where you can see something. You’ve been sitting on that phone since Limon.”

---

They killed the afternoon at a truck wash and a diner with the cab windows cracked, and it was after five when Hank finally turned west. The road climbed out of the city on I-70 and Sam stopped being able to talk. The whole country tilted up. The highway wound between rock cuts and stands of aspen gone yellow, and he kept leaning forward against his seat belt like it would help. Hank drove with one wrist hooked over the wheel and let him. At exit 254 he took the ramp up into a gravel pullout above the interstate, a long empty lot with a rail fence at the far end, and parked the bobtail Pete nose-out toward the slope. Down in the meadow a dozen big brown humped shapes were grazing in the last of the light, unbothered.

“Buffalo,” Hank said. “The city keeps a herd. I come up here every run if I’ve got the hours. Walt used to say I was a fool for it. A bunch of hairy animals standing around in a field.”

“They’re something else.”

“They are.” Hank dug the cooler out from behind the seat, and they ate cold fried chicken sitting on the passenger step with their boots in the gravel while the sun went orange and then purple on the ridges. Neither of them said anything until the light was almost gone. Sam had the last drumstick in his hand and a lump in his throat he couldn’t swallow around.

“You said past Denver.”

Hank wiped his fingers on a paper napkin, slowly, one at a time.

“I did.”

“We’re past Denver. We’re twenty miles west of it.”

“We are.” Hank folded the napkin and set it on the cooler lid. “And I’m going to ask you to wait.”

Sam’s whole face went hot. He’d rehearsed not minding this behind the dumpster, and it hadn’t worked. “Walt said you would.”

“Walt knows me.” Hank turned on the step so he was facing him, one big knee against Sam’s thigh. In the last light his eyes were very steady. “I said Denver because I figured I’d be ready by Denver. I’m not. I want you to hear what I’ve got to say in Salina first. Then you say yes knowing the whole thing. I did it the other way once. I’m not doing it that way again.”

“And if I don’t want to wait?”

“Then say so. I’ll listen.” He was quiet a moment. “I want it plenty, sweetheart. Give me your hand.”

Sam gave it. Hank laid it flat against his own chest, over the plaid, over the heavy slow heart under all that grey hair. It was going a lot faster than a man’s should when he’s sitting still. Then Hank took the hand down and set it on his thigh with his own hand spread over the top, and his hand was shaking, a fine steady tremor, the way a rope shakes when something big is pulling on the far end.

“I want it so bad my hands do that,” Hank said. “Don’t take it for anything else.”

Down in the meadow the buffalo moved through the dark. Out on the interstate a truck downshifted for the grade. Sam sat with Hank’s shaking hand on his and felt the anger go out of him all at once, like air out of a tire.

“Okay,” he said. His voice cracked. “I’ll wait for Salina.”

“Thank you.”

“But you owe me.” He turned his hand over and laced their fingers together. “Everything else. You said everything else you were having.”

Hank looked at him for a while. Then one corner of his mouth went up, slow and dark, and Sam felt it in his balls.

“Get in the back,” he said.

---

The sleeper was dim and still warm from the afternoon sun. Hank dragged the curtain shut and sat down heavily on the bottom bunk, and when Sam stood in front of him he put both hands on Sam’s belt and took his time over the buckle, like he was unwrapping something. He tugged the quarter-zip and the T-shirt up over Sam’s head and dropped them on the cab floor. Then he pressed his bearded face to Sam’s soft belly, right over the mark he’d sucked there at Limon, still dark as a plum, and breathed in.

“I like this more every time I see it,” he said into the skin.

“You’re being nice.”

“I’m being accurate.” He kissed the mark. He kissed along the waistband, one slow kiss after another, while Sam’s cock got harder and bumped against his chin and Sam’s breath started coming out in little pieces. When he worked the jeans down Sam toed off the pinching boots and kicked free of everything. Then he was naked in a dim cab with his knees going, and Hank hadn’t so much as unbuttoned his flannel, and he had both hands on Sam’s hips and his thumbs digging into the soft flesh there.

“Climb up on my leg.”

Sam blinked at him. “Your leg.”

“Humor me. I’ve been looking at that ass since Hays and I want to feel what it does.”

Sam didn’t understand until Hank hauled him in by the hips and he was astride that right thigh with his bare cock and balls pressed against the denim. It was hard and hot through the cloth. Hank’s hands cupped his ass and squeezed, and Sam grunted like he’d been punched.

“There. Ride it. You want this?”

“Yes. God, yes.” He groaned it against Hank’s mouth, because Hank had pulled him down into a kiss, deep and wet, with a hard tug of the beard on his chin. “I want everything you’ll give me.”

“Then you’ll get it.”

Sam rolled forward and gasped. The rough weave dragged along the underside of his cock, almost too much, and the muscle under him flexed to meet him. He gripped Hank’s shoulders and rode, slow at first, then faster, then helplessly, leaving a wet trail on the blue cloth with every stroke.

“You’re soaking my jeans.” Hank sounded hoarse and pleased. “Leaking all over me. I’m going to be walking around Aurora with your mess on my leg.”

“I can’t help it. God, Hank, it’s so rough. It’s so good.” His balls dragged over the seam with every pass and he moaned, loud, from the bottom of his chest. “Oh fuck, I’m gonna wear a hole in you. I’m gonna come all over your jeans like this.”

“Take what you need.” Hank got his mouth on Sam’s chest and pulled a nipple in with a flat tongue, then scraped it with his teeth, and Sam bucked so hard the bunk rattled. He slid one hand down the small of Sam’s back and pushed him harder into the stroke. “I’ve got you. Ride my leg like you mean it.”

He did, until his thighs shook, humping that thigh with his head thrown back and his mouth open, loud as he wanted to be. There wasn’t a soul within a hundred yards but the buffalo. Sam’s cock throbbed against the denim with every roll, and Hank talked him through all of it in a rough, steady mutter. You’re gonna leave a wet spot I can feel all the way to Salina. You’re dripping on me. Listen to that, that’s you, that’s how wet you are. Tell me what you want. And Sam told him in pieces, your cock, I want it in my mouth, I want it all over my face, I want to taste you, and when he was nearly gone Hank clamped both hands on his hips and held him still, trembling and gasping on top of that thigh.

“Down here first.”

Hank spread his knees and pulled Sam off his leg and down onto the floor between his boots, and Sam went gladly, on his knees on the cold metal with his cock swinging and aching. Hank opened his own belt and his jeans with one hand and shoved them down, and his cock came out thick and heavy and already wet at the tip, resting on his belly with the foreskin pulled halfway back. He took hold of it and tapped it once, twice, against Sam’s lips, and said, “Go on. Slow.”

Sam opened his mouth. He tasted of sweat and road dust, and the flannel smell that lived in the whole cab was strongest right there in the hair at the base. Hank’s hand came to the back of his head and stayed there, heavy and warm, letting Sam set the pace. Sam rolled his tongue under the head and worked the foreskin back with his lips, and Hank’s breath went out of him in a long shaky groan.

“Christ. Your mouth.” Hank’s thumb found his cheek, where the head was bulging it out. “There you go. Wet it all the way down. Let it drip.”

Sam took him as far as he could and then a little farther, with his eyes watering and spit running down the shaft and into the grey hair, and Hank’s belly rose and fell against his forehead. He gagged once and came off, coughing, with a string of spit hanging from his lip, and went right back down, and Hank said “Fuck, yes,” rough and surprised, like it had been knocked out of him. Sam worked his fist at the base and sucked until his jaw hurt, cupping Hank’s heavy balls in his other hand and rolling them, and Hank swore and shoved his boots wider on the floor. “Fuck, you taste good,” he said, and Sam hummed around him in answer. Sam made noises he hadn’t known he had, wet hungry humming ones, and every one of them made Hank’s thighs tighten around his shoulders.

“That’s it. Your mouth was made for my dick, sweetheart, I swear to God. Keep making that sound. I want to feel it.” Hank cursed above him in a steady grunting undertone, and his hips started to lift on their own, shallow, giving Sam the head and then a little more. “Easy. I’m gonna blow in your throat if you keep that up.”

Sam looked up at him through wet lashes with his mouth stretched around the thickest part, and Hank groaned, “Yeah, eyes up here while you do it. I want you to know exactly whose dick this is.”

Then Hank’s fingers closed in his hair and pulled, gently, until he came off with a wet pop.

“Not yet,” Hank said, breathing hard. “I want something else. Up on the bunk. On your stomach.”

Sam crawled up and lay face down with his cheek on Hank’s pillow. He heard Hank strip his jeans and boots off the rest of the way, and then a cap click and a small wet sound, and a cool slick palm slid up the back of one thigh and down the other.

“Water-based. Bought it in Limon and felt like a fool at the register. Squeeze your legs together for me.”

Sam pressed his thighs shut. Hank’s big hand ran down between them with the slick, and then the whole bunk dipped as Hank’s weight came over him, and a heavy hot cock slid between the tops of his thighs, below his balls, with Hank’s hairy belly settling on the small of his back.

“Oh,” Sam said into the pillow. “Oh, God.”

“Hold them tight.” Hank’s breath was in his ear and his beard scraped Sam’s shoulder. “Just like that. Don’t let go. You tell me if you want me to stop.”

“Don’t stop. Please, Hank, keep going.”

Hank fucked slowly between his thighs. The fat head slid forward along the seam where Sam’s balls hung, and dragged back, thick and slow, bumping each time against the bottom edge of his hole and sliding off again. Sam’s whole body clenched, wanting to open for it, and a ragged moan tore out of him every time that head caught on the edge and slipped away. It never went in. Hank held to that, grunting, with nothing but the slick hot length of him dragging past, so hard and wet that Sam could feel every vein of it on the soft skin inside his thighs. Every pass left Sam wanting it so badly he could have wept, and every time the answer was no.

“That’s all of me,” Hank breathed, “right on your door, sweetheart. And I’m not coming in till you’ve heard everything.”

“Please.” Sam said it into the pillow, into the dark. His hips were rolling back into every stroke and he couldn’t make them stop. “Please, Hank. Just the head.”

“No.” He said it gently, and he meant it. “But I’ll make you come so hard you forget you asked.”

He slid a hand under Sam’s hip and found his cock and closed a slick fist around it, and fucked his thighs harder. The slap of belly on ass filled the sleeper, along with the wet sounds and Sam’s cries climbing higher, and he couldn’t have stopped them if he’d tried. Hank bit the back of his neck, hard enough to leave a mark, and Sam howled into the pillow. Hank said yeah, so tight, so hot between your legs, I feel your balls bouncing on me, I’m gonna fuck these thighs till I’ve painted you, and Sam’s cock jerked in the big fist and he shouted Hank’s name and came hard, in long pulses over Hank’s knuckles and the blanket. Hank swore and shoved his face into Sam’s shoulder and groaned and came too, spilling hot across the small of his back, and kept thrusting through it, slipping and sliding in his own mess while Sam clenched his thighs tight around him and milked out every last pulse. “Fuck,” Hank gasped into his skin. “Fuck. You did that to me,” and Sam laughed and sobbed at the same time into the pillow.

They lay in the wet and the dark for a while. Hank’s weight pressed him down, rising and falling, and his heartbeat knocked against Sam’s spine.

“Paper towels,” Hank said finally.

“You know where they are.”

Hank huffed a laugh against his neck. After a while a callused hand slid over Sam’s and held on.

When Sam could talk again he said, into the pillow, “I’m not going to be in a bus station in Salina. I want that on the record.”

“Don’t promise me anything at seven thousand feet. The air’s thin.” Hank’s thumb moved over his knuckles. “Ask me in Kansas.”

“I will.”

“I know you will. You’ve got a good memory for what people say. It’s the worst thing about you.” He pulled the blanket up over both of them, and then, after a minute, rolled Sam over, wet and sticky, and kissed him, slow and thorough, with his beard soft now and his mouth tasting of the cold chicken. “I kept count, by the way. Of the sounds you made. I lost track after thirty.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Ask Walt,” Hank said. “I’m accurate.”

---

The alarm went at four-forty, and Sam was dressed and in the passenger seat before it finished, with his pinching boots laced and the quarter-zip zipped to his chin. He felt scraped clean. The buffalo were gone from the meadow and the dark over the pullout was so deep the stars looked close enough to touch.

Hank came forward with the thermos and his glasses and settled behind the wheel. He turned the key. He didn’t say anything, and Sam understood the first hour had started, and kept his own mouth shut.

They were rolling down the ramp toward the interstate when his phone lit on his thigh.

Walt. Told you he’d ask you to wait. Check the visor on your side. Don’t make a thing of it. Just look.

Sam glanced over. Hank had both hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road. The visor on Sam’s side was an ordinary grey one, worn at the edges. He reached up and flipped it down.

A piece of paper was tucked behind the elastic strap, folded small. He eased it out and opened it on his knee under the dash light. It was an old Greyhound timetable, soft as cloth along the creases, the kind they used to hand you at the counter, with Tulsa to Salina on one side and Salina to Tulsa on the other. The two-fifteen departure out of Salina was circled in pencil, and next to the circle, in square block capitals that could only be Hank’s, was today’s date.

He looked at Hank. Nothing in that face had changed. His eyes stayed straight ahead on the road, and a muscle in his jaw moved once and went still.

Sam folded the timetable along the same soft creases and slid it back behind the strap. He flipped the visor up. Nobody said a word for the rest of the hour. Down the grade the lights of the city spread out below them, and past the city the road ran east, straight and grey, toward Salina.