Suite Dreams
Like Joni, y'know. Checked into the Cactus Tree Motel® and dreaming of 747s® over geometric farms.1 There are some things we only dream about when we're away from home.
Remember Terry who we met way back on page 13? [In the print edition.] Yesterday he was telling me how his dreams when he sleeps in the fire tower are much different from those he dreams when he slumbers with Carol,2 though calling the box on stilts a “suite” is probably a stretch.
He has nightmares when he sleeps alone on the pine boards, worrying about the coming (or current?) alien mattress invasion. With Carol he sets aside his worries and enjoys very pleasant phantasmagorias.3 La-la land in the best sense.
[Oh, they are getting on famously!4]
Quentin has had the same experience, though he sleeps neither on the floor (at home), nor with Carol, though the latter idea has crossed his mind. He's a regular Ranger Rick® and works out of the same office as the object of Terry's affection. He's just a little jealous as well, but, hey, he could have asked her for a date way back when. They are friends, which is nice.
Early birds get the worms, you know.5
Quentin's territory is large so some nights find him hours away from home. Rather than make a long nighttime commute only to get up early and drive back, he rolls out a sleeping bag (on the floor) in a shelter-half or cabin or tent deep in the woods, eats some trail-mix and reads by flashlight. The kind of upstanding/down-lying guy we all admire.
Oh, does that take me back. Zap. A memory I haven't revisited in decades. [And talk about hot'n'steamy!]
I went on a three week bus adventure with a group of Boy Scouts®, from Florida to Colorado in 1965. It was a well-planned jaunt and probably cost my parents a ton. We stopped at various historic sites along the way including the Alamo® and saw a major league baseball game, I think in Houston. We arrived at the wilderness camp drop-off at night in a rain storm and had to hike-in a considerable distance with our personal gear. [There were wall-type tents waiting on platforms in the campsite.]
My young brother6 slipped and fell in the mud and was on the verge of tears, so being the kind of guy I am, I hefted his pack as well as mine for the balance of the trek. For many years thereafter he deemed me to be kind of his hero, which obviously felt pretty good. But that's not where this story is headed.
On our return to Florida we spent two nights in cabins at a Scout® camp before our parents picked us up. It was hot and fairly miserable, particularly when compared to the Colorado mountains. There were no screens, or perhaps inadequate ones, and to ward off mosquitoes one had to stay completely inside a sleeping bag. That's the hot part.
The steamy came along just before Taps®. Somewhere—this part I don't recall—I found several magazines that were not G-rated. It was my first exposure to fairly lurid descriptive material. Whether it would qualify as porn today, I don't know, but it sure got my attention. By flashlight. Inside the sleeping bag.
Hot'n'steamy!
Quentin's reading material is far more high-minded.7
But before we get back to Quentin, around whom this story revolves, the previous true story has now reminded me of another episode, or series of episodes, that occurred perhaps two years later. So I would have been about 17.
We lived on a lake and had a boat moored next to the dock I had helped Dad construct a few years previously. Most of our neighbors did the same, generally hiring out the dock-building part. The doctors who lived two and three doors down had pretty elaborate boats with cabins, whereas ours was a simple runabout-type ski boat.
We children of privilege often hung out on the boats, particularly the cruisers which subbed as our clubhouses. One day I was alone on one of the fancy ones, waiting for the son of one of the docs to show up, and being curious, if not nosy, I lifted a triangular cushion in the bow. OMG! A thick stack of Playboy® magazines! I quickly replaced the lid, my youthful heart going pitter-pat.
As you surely imagine, I didn't tell a soul, even the friend who shortly arrived. We joked around about whatever 17-year-olds joked about in 1967. Did he know? Were they his dad's? His?
But as you can also surely imagine, being a Boy Scout® I adhered to the motto, “Be Prepared!” Armed with a penlight that night—and many thereafter—I raided the stash taking and returning one at a time, turning the erstwhile clubhouse into a lending library. Fond memories of youth. Sweet dreams indeed.
But back to the tale at hand.
Quentin told me about a difficult experience he had while sleeping in a lean-to shelter adjacent to the Appalachian Trail®.
It was a moonless night and the stars were in their glory.8
He had been asleep a few hours and woke from a fairly terrifying dream involving some sort of beast, more in the form of a nameless threat than a recognizable form. Being an experienced woodsman, regular animals don't much frighten our protagonist, but this threat was way outside the norm.9 His teeth were even chattering a bit.10
That's when the bear walked in. [You see, there is no front on a lean-to shelter. Always open for business.]
Obviously enough, Quentin, being who he is, had no food in the building. He didn't even have any food in a sack on a rope slung over a branch. He'd eaten his trail-mix before he left his U.S. Forest Service® pickup at the trailhead.
But here's the thing. Waking from a truly terrifying dream on what we previously learned was a moonless night, he could hear the snuffing but he couldn't see the animal. He recognized the sound alright, but a black bear doesn't exactly stand out in a dark place with no ambient illumination.
Well, starlight, yes. As mentioned upslope stars were in their glory. Twinkling like mad. Like there was no tomorrow. But would there be a tomorrow for Quentin?
Now he could smell the beast, kind of a wild odor … not skunky, maybe more foxy. But definitely gamey. The kind of smell that you might have smelt if you ever petted a wet Labrador retriever. Or, maybe if a raccoon set up camp under your house. Musky. Not altogether unattractive, which is the reason why musk oil is used in many perfumes.
We often get a whiff when we pass a dead skunk on the highway. It can be overwhelming, or, with sufficient diffusion, kind of nice.
The barely visible beast sort of snuffed over his way then padded to the other end of the small structure. It made kind of an oomph sound and settled.
Quentin was taking very cautious breaths at this point. Black bears are not generally aggressive unless they are protecting youngsters. So presently, in our (his) narrative, he figured things would be OK.
That's when the two cubs stumbled in. He could tell they were youngsters by the pacing of their paddy-paws and their higher pitched snuffing. They seemed to go to the adult bear and he could hear some kind of grunted greetings. Then what sounded like licking. He waited. Things got quiet with the grownup, presumably a Mom, even snoring. Quentin was gathering himself to make a quick and quiet departure when one of the cubs ambled over to his side and settled against him with one forearm over his leg.
Well, needless to say … but why should I follow that idiom by saying it? I mean, if it's needless. Right?
Of course we know our guy survived, else he'd not have told me that story.
My guess was that he didn't sleep well, and I was right! He told me he was petrified, afraid to move! But, in the end, he dozed off. It had been a long day and a harsh night. Also, cuddling with a teddy bear can trigger childhood memories.
When he woke, with a start—and likely with an erection: see footnote #221—the bears were gone. He even thought for a moment that all of it had been part of the nightmare.
But then, there was that smell. [Reminding Quentin and all of us of Lynyrd Skynyrd's® lyrical treatment of back monkeys.]
“Oo-oo that smell
Can't you smell that smell?11
********
NOTE PER FOOTNOTES: Substack starts off with new numbering each time I post a story. But Footnotes in the original book are continuous and often refer back to previous super important stuff. So original Footnote #s are included below in [#]s.
1 [212] “Amelia” on Hejira, A&M, 1976
2 [213] Yes, they've gotten much better acquainted during the past eighty-some pages. I bet your glasses are getting pretty steamy, eh? These explicit scenes really get most readers going.
3 [214] Though we here note that when she's in another room of her apartment he occasionally punches the mattress to see if there are any signs of life.
4 [215] Two steamies on one page! This is getting to be a regular Valley of the Dolls®-type episode!
5 [216] Though this always makes one wonder about the early worms.
6 [217] RIP. He reached his date of expiry in 2012.
7 [218] Like many of my characters he owns several of my titles.
8 [219] For you wannabe writers out there, setting a scene this way is to practically guarantee consideration for a National Book Award.®
9 [220] A mattress? See the first story in this collection if you've forgotten.
10 [221] Although he didn't mention this, he almost certainly had an erection. I've recently read a study which found that most healthy men do when waking from a dream. Hence the phrase “morning wood.” Thought you'd like to know.
11 [222] Street Survivors, MCA®, 1977
Copyright 2023, Cecil Bothwell, All rights reserved.