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The Man with the Jeep Chapter 12
They both jumped in surprise and slowly turned to face the speaker.
Andrew's thoughts immediately returned to the same slasher movies that the garage had conjured the weekend before. 'This is it,' he thought to himself. 'This is how we die.'
The stout silver-haired man who had broken their reverie was scowling at them from under bushy eyebrows that shaded his eyes into dark recesses. He was holding a shotgun in front of him with both hands, not aiming at them, but both hands were positioned in such a way that a short pivot could obviously bring it to bear on Andrew and John in the blink of an eye.
Andrew heard John release his breath.
"It's okay, Coop. It's me."
The man squinted at him for a second and then visibly relaxed his guard and sauntered toward them.
"Master Johnny?" Coop asked. "My apologies! I didn't recognize you with your hair all short. You didn't tell me you were coming by!"
"I'm sorry, Coop. It was a last-minute decision to come down this way, but I should have given you a heads up."
"It's alright," Coop groused in his gravelly voice. "It's good for me to keep on my toes. Duncan told me there were a couple guys up the hill, so I was just about to head up and see what was what."
"Well thank you, but it's just us. Oh! Where are my manners? Coop, this is my boyfriend Andrew. Andrew, this is Cooper, myÉ grounds man."
"Boyfriend, you say? No kidding! This is a surprise! Well, it's a pleasure indeed to meet you, Andy!"
He reached a beefy hand out, which Andrew politely shook. He felt a little bit like a kid as Cooper's massive calloused fingers dwarfed his own.
"If Master Johnny deems you worthy of dating, then you are alright in my book."
"Thank you, Mr. Cooper. It's nice to meet you too!"
"Aw, don't mess with the `Mister' part," Cooper sputtered. "Just Cooper--or better yet, Coop. That's what everyone calls me around here."
"Got it, Coop!"
The old man beamed at him. Now that he wasn't being menacing, Andrew had to do a double take of Cooper. Those bushy eyebrows seemed to emphasize every expression the man had. The scowl earlier had made him completely unapproachable, but when he smiled, he lit up into a rustic kind of Santa Claus.
Wow, Andrew thought to himself. First impressions do nothing for this guy.
"So how have things been?" John asked.
"Oh, can't complain," said Coop. "The camp hasn't been overrun or anything and we have enough visitors to keep things going. And those visitors keep things from getting all stuck in a rut. You know, just last week--" he stopped himself after John shot him a warning look that Andrew didn't see. "Well, we can talk about that later. How long are you boys staying?"
"We will probably head back early Sunday evening. We both have normal jobs, you know."
"Overrated!" exclaimed Coop vehemently. "It makes no sense to keep the Big Man on his throne, and the more you work for him, the bigger that throne gets! I am quite happy where I'm at, and I wish everyone was." He spat on the ground apparently to emphasize the point. "Sorry for that. Need anything sent up?"
"No thank you," John said smiling at the animated gentleman before him. "If that changes, I can shoot you a text. Thank you for keeping tabs on everything for me!"
"My pleasure," Coop proclaimed. "My pleasure. Shall I restrain the dogs until Sunday night?"
"No, don't bother. They haven't disturbed us yet and you know full well I can handle them if they do."
"That I do!" Coop agreed. "Okay, well I will get back to work then. Have fun, boys, and it was nice to meet you Andy!"
Normally, Andrew insisted that he be called Andrew' now to put distance between himself and a rough history when he went by Andy', but when it came to Coop, he couldn't bring himself to make that assertion. He had the strong suspicion that he could turn blue in the face and still not be anything but `Andy' to the irrepressible older man.
Coop turned on his heel and vanished into trees quickly.
"Sorry about that," John caught his eye. "I didn't think he would be around. He normally keeps within the campground farther up the river."
"You have a campground too?"
John chuckled. "Yeah. It started out as a little inn for travelers who would need a place to shelter after a hard day's ride across open country. When the trail became a road, it grew to include a full-fledged restaurant with some sites cleared for when people needed to camp overnight. Over time it just kind of kept growing as we added picnic tables, fire pits, and outhouses. It's not super big, but we even have wi-fi there now."
As John spoke, it slowly dawned on Andrew that John might come from a wealthy family. Up to now, he had chalked up all the land to simply an inheritance as John had described, but now he wasn't so sure. The outhouse and the stairs certainly would have taken money to build. Now there was a full-time groundskeeper who lived on the premises and managed the estate, campground, a restaurant and who knows what else, apparently with guard dogs and a shotgun for security.
"Come on, I want to show you something else," said John with one of his mysterious grins.
He and Andrew got back in the Jeep and headed downstream for a while. As they drove, Andrew tried to process all the new information he had gleaned from the exchange with Coop.
So John was from money. Andrew grew up poor, and it was only in the last few years that he had begun to feel financially comfortable. He didn't know anyone notably well-to-do before John. How was that going to affect their relationship? Rich people had their own way of doing things, and it seemed ruthless to Andrew. What if he became a scheming, heartless, and calculating man? He didn't think he would be able to live with himself if he became like that. That was a strangely comforting thought.
All of a sudden, he had to laugh at himself. Here he was worrying about becoming a jerk because he was rich, when the reality was that he wasn't, and this entire train of thought was tied to nothing more than Hollywood portrayals.
So what if John was rich? Andrew had never seen even a trace of snobbery in him. He treated people with respect and didn't expect people to wait on him hand and foot. If anything, he did that much less than many of his other acquaintances did that he knew earned even less than Andrew. So apparently entitlement was less about money and more about attitude. The fact that Andrew hadn't even realized John might be rich until today went a long way toward calming his fears.
Andrew was really going to have to stop borrowing trouble where none existed.
He looked over at his chauffer in the seat beside him. His chauffer in shorts and a t-shirt. His chauffer in short shorts and a tight t-shirt. Andrew was once again caught up in admiring John. His burly chest pulled his shirt tight and Andrew could see through it just enough to make out the forest of hair under the fabric. Fabric that was being strained to contain his perky nipples that threatened to poke right through. His shorts were so well fitting that there was no gap between John's leg and the shorts. But for the thickness of the material, they might as well have been painted on. The red color of the shorts accentuated the golden fleece covering John's legs, and Andrew could barely resist the urge to run his fingers through it.
John glanced over at him. "So what are you thinking about?"
Andrew didn't want to confess that to John, but his desire to cultivate a culture of honesty between them won out over his embarrassment.
"I was just thinking about how we could get along with you being rich and me being poor."
"Really?" John asked, surprised.
"Well, yeah."
"Well, you needn't worry on that account. I don't make a whole lot more than you do. Despite what you might think. I'm not that successful."
"How can you say that with all this land? Those stairs and the outhouse aren't cheap. Let alone keeping a live-in staff!"
John laughed. "When you put it that way, I see what you mean, but I promise we are not as wealthy as all that. Well, maybe my grandpa is, but most of the family just lives paycheck to paycheck.
"I told you this land was inherited down through the family forever. I wasn't lying. And all the improvements come directly from a trust fund held to the land. It was started at the very beginning, so it has grown over the years despite obvious hiccups in the national economy at times. It's been well-managed, but even now, we are limited to half of the annual dividends. Don't get me wrong: if we cashed everything out, yes, we would make a lot of money, but we don't see almost any of it. The economy was doing well when we wanted to do the stairs and when I came up with the outhouse project. There are a couple other things around here that will look impressive too, but they all took patience and hard work.
"As for Coop, he's not really paid. He was homeless when I met him, but he didn't have any of the mental issues as is so common. He was truly just down on his luck. I asked around about him, and everyone who knew him thought he was a great guy, so I offered to let him stay at the campground in exchange for managing it and making whatever minor repairs he could. I tried to give him a salary, but he wouldn't have any of it. We reached a compromise where his room and board were covered, but I pay him cash for any repairs he does. Honestly, he's a great fix-it man, and I'd pay him whatever he wanted, but he still gets three quotes for every job and sends me a bill for the average. I used to wish there was more that I could do for him, but he insists he's never been happier. The cash payment part cracks me up because he is a little bit of a conspiracy theorist when it comes to the government. He's quite the character."
"Sounds like it!" Andrew said, chuckling.
"But he's one of the sweetest guys you'll ever meet."
"Well, it was nice to meet him."
Andrew looked ahead and could see where the "Great Staircase," as he was coming to think of it, met the beach. John pulled within twenty feet of it and turned off the Jeep.
Andrew noticed what looked like a rather large hole burrowed into the side of the bluff about ten feet from the stairs.
"What's this?" Andrew asked.
"That is a shed now, but it used to be essentially a playhouse."
"It looks like a cave," Andrew observed.
John laughed. "It was supposed to be a Hobbit house. Did you ever read Lord of the Rings?"
"No, those books were too big and they scared me," Andrew admitted, suddenly somehow embarrassed. "But I did read The Hobbit."
"Then you get it," John said, pleased. "This was supposed to be Underhill, Bilbo's house. We had these old circular platters that we painted to look like windows and shoved them into the side of the hill there to pretend the house was bigger than it was. I'm sure those are long gone now, but check this out."
John led Andrew into the alcove, which was nowhere near as deep as it first appeared. The front of the Hobbit hole-cum-shed was only three feet back from the face of the bluff. It only looked deeper because of the dark brown color the door had been painted. John pulled out a few overgrown weeds, and Andrew could see that although the door was a small normally shaped door, the front wall had been painted to make it look like the door was round just like in the stories.
John entered the key sequence for the padlock, and it grudgingly opened. "I guess it's been a while," he chuckled.
They hunched over and squeezed through the portal into a room that was surprisingly spacious. Just like in the stories, the room was basically round, so once they made it through the doorway, there was noticeably more headroom toward the middle of the room. "Wow, you must have loved this when you were a kid!"
"I really did! My dad had wanted to make it when he was a kid, but the cousins weren't very interested in the idea, so he just did it himself. He dug all this out and did his best to secure it with driftwood and scraps of plywood he found lying around. Back then, it was just a dirt hole done sideways with a plywood front on it. He eventually outgrew it, of course, but after I read the books as a kid and got all excited about the story, Dad took me down here and showed me what he had created. By then it had been through several serious rainy seasons and apparently a flood, so there wasn't much left, but because my cousins were just as excited as I was about the idea, he had us dig it out again and then used some of the trust money to make a true replica in the space out of concrete and wood. He didn't want it to deteriorate like his had. It has been here ever since."
Around the outside walls were heaps of old inner tubes, a few paddles, an inflatable boat, life vests of various colors and sizes, and other random waterfront paraphernalia. All quite dusty and dirty.
"How fun!"
"Very! This was a huge reason why we kept coming down to the river and why the stairs were put right here."
`That is such a cool story."
"Thanks!"
They looked around for a few more minutes before squishing through the door to emerge back in the sunlight.
"So now you see the bottom of the stairs and the treasure at the end. Before long, you will see the top as well. Maybe someday we will hike the entire thing, but not now. I think even I would be sore for a couple days if I did it all."
"Maybe we should start on it in chunks and build up from there."
"Not a bad idea. It wouldn't hurt to get back in shape."
"'Back' in shape? Really?"
"Sure! Back in the day when I was into hardcore body building, I used to run them. Nothing beats a stone staircase to develop your calves and quads, let me tell you!"
"You were a body builder?"
"For about two years, yes. But then I decided I was satisfied with what I had achieved physically and wanted to eat something besides fish and vegetables, so that was that."
"You still look amazing, for what it's worth."
"Thank you. I had to do SOMEthing to attract a hot guy like you!" he laughed.
"It worked on me anyway," Andrew admitted.
John looked Andrew directly in the eye, "If it had to work on only one person in the entire world, I'm glad it was you," John said earnestly.
"Me too, honestly."
They each leaned in to embrace and share a kiss. Andrew melted as usual in John's bear hug. They stayed like that for some time just enjoying the physical contact before John backed away a little bit.
"So how are you at skipping rocks?"
"It's been a while, so I'm not sure, but I remember being pretty good."
"Well now is your chance to prove how `pretty good' you are!" John declared as he leaned down and grabbed a few flat stones.
Andrew followed suit and soon they were having fun trying to outdo each other with distance, number of skips, and height of each bounce.
John came away with a clear advantage, so he offered to give Andrew tips.
Andrew agreed, so John told him how he chose which stones he would pick to toss, explaining the advantages of the smoother and more evenly round ones.
"We just did it to mess around," Andrew laughed. "It sounds like you have this down to a science."
"Well, science is actually super helpful with this. We mostly just messed around too, but one of my older cousins schooled me pretty badly and I hate to lose, so I hit the books and tried to research how to skip stones. I don't think I'm an expert or anything, but I did get notably better very quickly. In fact, I beat my cousin the next time we played and he refused to play me after that, hahaha."
"So is there a particular way you toss the stone too?"
"Of course there is! You stand sideways like you're batting or golfing, lean back, take your rock and hold it like you're going to pitch a baseball with your index finger along the top edge of the rock. Then you just fling it sideways with your arm. If you do it right, the stone will spin as it rolls off your finger and that helps it skip better and farther."
Andrew tried, but the motion ended up being a little jerky and funny--made funnier when the pebble just went straight down into the water with a kerplop.
"Here, let me show you," John offered. He came up behind Andrew and guided his posture with his own body, clasping his hand over Andrew's to help him get the hang of the motion.
Andrew just couldn't get the hang of it somehow, despite John's repeated attempts to help him. It took a while before John caught on to Andrew's little ploy.
"I don't think you're really trying, are you?" John asked him directly.
"What makes you say that?" Andrew asked, trying to sound completely innocent.
"Oh, I don't know; maybe the fact that you are getting worse with every throw?"
"Only if your measure is by rock toss," Andrew giggled. He could feel John's cock against his butt and knew it was growing with every toss he guided Andrew through. "I choose to measure by how close I can get your rocks off!"
"Why you little stinker!" John growled.
Andrew abruptly turned and before John could adjust his leaned-back rock-throwing stance, Andrew gave him a little push and down he went with Andrew on top of him in a flash. John was laughing too hard to put up much of a fight before Andrew had him pinned down.
"I win!" Andrew exclaimed gleefully.
"I see that," laughed John. "And what is the victor's prize?"
"You know my prize!" he grinned as he ground his hard cock against John's. "It's my turn!"