Chapter 27: Quiet Coolness
It was just past sunset when we rode into our campground, the group of us happily exhausted. Kaitlyn was still in the lead, so we slowed when she did, alongside a BLM pickup parked near the campground entrance, well short of the Alexanders’ spot.
She was chatting with the person in the cab, her interlocutor obscured by shadows and the sky’s fading light reflecting off the windshield. Once I got around to where I could see thru the truck’s rolled-down side window, Kaitlyn turned to me and asked, “Davie, you remember my story about The Goat passing out pics of me taken at the WNBR?”
“Of course.”
Referring to the white guy in a ranger uniform sitting inside, Kaitlyn announced, “This is Chris the Chivalrous.”
He was dark haired, maybe ten years older than me, and reasonably good-looking. I glanced down at his name badge and read “C. Warner,” then looked back up into his steady brown eyes, held a hand out to him, and excitedly said, “Oh, wow! I owe you big. You really helped her turn that situation around.”
He shook my hand, smiled self-deprecatingly, and responded with a small head-shake, “I’ve already been paid back. I have that signed photo framed in my home office, Kaitlyn! It’s one of my most precious possessions.”
She blushed a bit at this, emitting a low, “Awww!” sound, more embarrassment than flattered pleasure, her eyes going down and to the right.
Then a small smile stole over her face, and her eyes snapped up to his. “You know, Chris, we were going to get some dinner, but we got so sweaty on our ride that I think we should go launder my riding clothes first,” she added with a wink.
The ranger looked thoughtful, then essayed, “…And you were contemplating doing your laundry in the river.”
“You are quick, yes,” she said with a smirk.
The man looked around a bit at the quiet campground, then said, “You be careful. The river can be tricky, especially at night.”
“Thanks, Chris.” Then she leaned into the window and gave him a peck on the cheek. “C’mon, y’all,” she bade us, and we resumed our ride to our reserved spot. There we locked up the bikes and retrieved some towels.
Kaitlyn led us on foot to the campground’s northwest corner. There, she slipped down the slope to the Colorado River, removed her shoes near the water line, set them upon her towel, then placed her socks into her shoes.
Following her lead, we left our towels and footwear beside hers and waded into the river after her, enjoying a squishy patch of mud for a while, getting used to the river’s frigid water again, doing so faster than last night, our hosts knowing they could handle it now.
I tossed my shirt up onto the shore, covering some of the shoes, and Norman followed my example.
Kaitlyn surprised us by pulling her top off as well, tossing it over my shirt, then ducking swiftly down into the river, emitting a quiet involuntary “Haah” sound from the sharp shock of the cool river water on her warm skin. Between the darkening evening and the river’s muddy spring runoff, she’d only given the world the briefest of flashes, her perfect breasts now quite well concealed again.
Molly looked around several times, waded out toward Kaitlyn to the point that the bottom few inches of her top got wet, then turned her back to the campground, peeled her top off and ducked, one arm extended vertically to hold her top above the water, her breasts now just below its surface. She lobbed the balled shirt to Norman, who relayed it to shore.
Shortly, my wife and I walked further down into the river, she extending her squatting legs to maintain her apparent depth above the water line, me sinking further down as I walked closer to the center of the river.
Kaitlyn squirmed beneath the river’s concealment, soon holding the waistband of her bike shorts just above the water line so we could infer what she’d done.
I did my own duck-and-squirm, showing a peek of my shorts to the others in turn.
“You kids are so naughty!” scolded Molly with a quiet laugh, but the pair of them shortly held their shorts above water level as proof of their new state of dress.
I walked through the group collecting sodden unoccupied clothing, then used the power of my elected position as Holder of Coverings to lead my companions in a bobbing glide downstream, my speed regulated against the cool current by ginger steps of my bare feet along the slick rocky river bottom.
At the far corner of the campground, I deigned to pass the shorts back around, the recipients doing a much more vigorous duck-and-squirm to get them back on now, this being considerably more difficult than removing them in the cold current.
I was about to get out of the river to go fetch our dry things down from the other end of the campground when a now-familiar quiet baritone said, “Nice show, Kaitlyn!”
She stood erect and joined me in walking up the river bank to meet him, relying on the bank’s slope, the foliage, and the night to conceal her toplessness. The Alexanders chose to remain behind under the river’s more complete concealment.
“Thanks, Chris. Looking out for me again?”
“In both senses, yes,” he admitted with a small smile.
She kissed him on the cheek again. It was too dark to see, but I’d bet he blushed at that one. A topless kiss from Kaitlyn will do that to a person.
“Well, night, folks,” he said and began turning away, his concerns about our safety now apparently dispelled.
“Wait a sec, Chris. Could I get you to do something else for me?”
“Almost anything,” he replied with a gentle smirk.
“Davie, would you go with Chris and fetch our dry things?”
He looked at me, and I said, “She is entrusting us with control of her clothing; be honored.”
He bowed in a courtly sort of way to her and said, “Yes, ma’am. We won’t be long.”
“Oh, take your time,” she replied, “I’m not going anywhere.” Then she squatted down into the shadows of the riverside foliage and began to blithely chat with the Alexanders, just as if they weren’t three skinny-dippers in calling distance from a public campground.
As we were walking up-river along its bank, he dressed in his government-issue uniform, me wearing only my wet bike shorts, he observed, “She’s an amazing woman.”
“In many ways, yes,” I agreed.
He didn’t speak again for a while, but then said, “I earned one of the massage coupons from Ms. Richardson, you know…did the whole thing there in your back yard utterly bare, just us two. Not only me, y’know: her too.”
“She likes you, Ranger,” I told him simply.
“You aren’t mad?”
“What, at two friends enjoying each other? Why would I be?”
He let out a quiet chuckle and said, “Some guys’d be, their wife naked with some other dude.”
“Kaitlyn and I have a shared creed, Ranger: decrease the amount of pain in the world. She knew sharing time with you that way would do that, and that it wouldn’t bother me, so…” I let it go there, feeling no need to say more.
He contemplated that, then said, “It was one of the nicest afternoons of my life. I think I’m going to have to sign up for more, Mr. Bhat.”
“People my wife trusts enough to spend the afternoon naked and alone with get to call me Davie.”
He chuckled, then asked, “You wanna to be there with us next time, Davie?”
I guessed he was circumspectly asking if I wanted to chaperon them, but I returned a question, “Do you want a four-handed massage?”
We’d reached the other end of the campground by this point, stooping riverside to gather the discarded clothing and towels, the pair of us silent, me awaiting his answer, he composing it.
“I’m not sure how to evaluate that,” he admitted after we were on our way back down-river again.
I quipped, “Personal attention from a nude Kaitlyn on one hand vs. twice the attention from the two of us. Quite the dilemma you have there, Ranger.”
His teeth shone briefly in the moonlight. “I suppose it matters whether she’s nude.” Then with a thoughtful, sad note he added, “I’d be a paying customer at that point, so I suppose not.” He sighed resignedly.
“I’m not quite sure you do understand, Ranger. As I said, she likes you. Maybe she’ll give you another freebie, so the state’s rules on this don’t matter, or maybe she’ll bend the rules for her as you did for us here tonight.”
He thought some more, then asked, “How about you? Would you be nude in a four-handed massage?”
“Whichever way you want it,” I replied with neither judgement nor encouragement in my tone.
“I think I’d like that.”
Feeling a bit flattered by this, I asked, “You work an evening shift for the BLM, right? Checking on campgrounds leading up to quiet time each night and such?”
“That’s right,” he said. Then correctly inferring the reason I’d asked, he offered, “My next day off is Wednesday, after this holiday madness settles.”
“Wednesday evening it is. How about you come over for massage and dinner, and we can get to know each other better? Start at five-thirty or six, then go from there?”
“Perfect!” he said, holding a hand out to shake on it, which I returned.
We were down at the other end of the campground by this point, so we gingerly stepped down the riverbank and saw that Kaitlyn had returned to the river.
“Curiously,” she stage-whispered, “it’s more comfortable in the river than in the cooling night air!”
As the Ranger stooped to hand over her towel, his body cantilevered over the river, he almost lost his balance when Kaitlyn emerged fully nude. I heard him whisper something about “my own personal water nymph.”
Kaitlyn must’ve heard it, too, because she draped the towel over one arm, strode confidently up the river bank, and pulled him into a full-contact hug, kissing him semi-chastely on the lips.
For some reason, Chris didn’t object to his uniform front getting all wet, nor to her exchanging her sodden bike shorts for the proffered towel. He abstractedly wrung the synthetic garment out while she stepped back and rubbed herself down vigorously there on the bank, the squeezed-out river water getting his uniform boots wet, himself clearly past caring.
Kaitlyn had to prompt him for her top after she wrapped the dampened towel around her hips. She returned his amused grin after wiggling into the dry sports bra, then gestured for the return of the still-dripping bike shorts, held them up, and explained, “These’re too cold to put back on!”
The Alexanders stepped gingerly up the muddy river bank, accepting their own tops first, choosing to press the river water from their shorts with their hands while wearing them, evidently unwilling to fully follow Kaitlyn’s example. They did their best to dry themselves with the towels, running them over the top of their dripping shorts, then down their legs.
As I passed the Alexanders their shoes only, keeping the socks back — and if you wonder why, try putting dry socks on over pruned feet sometime — Kaitlyn was accepting her footwear from Ranger Chris. She didn’t put them on, just held them by their heel pulls, one to a finger of her left hand, clearly intending to walk back to camp barefoot.
I informed her of the plan I’d made, and she replied, “Sounds lovely! See you then, Chris!”
And with that, we parted, he to resume his night’s duties, we to return to our spot.
We let the Alexanders go into the motor home first, the sound of the shower starting up shortly after.
My wife spoke quietly over its rushing sound, “Get inside and peel so I can hang your riding shorts up to dry here.”
I shucked my shorts, dropping them in a sodden whuflap upon the motor home entry stairs, not bothering to close the door since the Alexanders turned on only the kitchen light, leaving me dimly backlit and visible from only a narrow angle out into the campground besides.
The Alexanders apparently opted for a couples shower, evidenced by the quiet giggle from the bathroom. I sat down in my skin at the galley table to wait my turn.
I let my companions’ activities fade into the background as I contemplated the evening’s events. Tonight was our second run-in with a ranger while skinny-dipping, also at night, also in the spring, also near this same campground, yet this one worked out almost entirely the opposite of the first one with Ex-Ranger Goetz. I realized that the differences all came down to the way one man chose to wield his station’s power in nearly identical circumstances.
Ed made it his mission to pester us several times before he’d crossed a line doing so and thereby lost his job. I hadn’t seen The Goat — as my wife called him — since his municipal court trial for criminal trespass on our property nearly a year back.
That was just fine with me. I hoped never to see him again.