Date: Sat, 31 May 2008 21:01:16 EDT From: Tommyhawk1@aol.com Subject: The Hidden Spring THE HIDDEN SPRING By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM WWW.TOMMYHAWKSROGUEMOON.COM Going back to Benton County was like going back in time. Back to my childhood. It was fitting that I should, upon my graduation from college, make this final trip back to my past before I set out to make my future. There was something here I had to do. There had been the five of us back, ten years ago, when I had been eleven years old. We had been out in the woods, walking, exploring, looking for something to do, away from the sun which had already made things too warm for comfort; the reason we had gone into the woods. Growing up in a sparsely populated area, you don't get to really pick your friends. You're lucky enough to get a few boys your own age to hang with, and for better or worse, they're your friends. Carl was the one who found it, and that by accident. He took a wrong step and went tumbling down an embankment. We laughed (it wasn't that steep a hill he was rolling down) and the leaves and bushes were rustling and crinkling as he rolled. And then we heard the splash. Bob laughed. "Sounds like he found a puddle." Then more splashing. Not the small splashes you get from a puddle, the big splashes you get from a pond or a stream. "Hey, guys!" Carl called out. "What are you doing down there?" "Come on down and see. But be careful!" "What is it?" "Come see!" "What is it?" "Come see!" "Aw, come on!" Ronald said. "Let's go see what Carl has found." What Carl had found...was magic! We were seeing it at the very height of springtime. Carl had fallen off a short drop into a woodland spring. This spring had its source somewhere beneath it, and the depression it was in was fairly small, only about thirty or forty feet across. We had come down the steep side, the other side was mostly shallow and from the spring, there flowed a small brook. The spring itself was comparatively calm and cool, about some fifteen feet across. It was completely sheltered by the trees around it, a large dogwood tree in full bloom on one side, and oaks and hickory trees on the other sides. They weren't thick enough to prevent grass from growing around the edges of the spring. There weren't any dead leaves around the spring, we later learned that the winter rains were enough to flood the entire area from time to time and wash the dead leaves downstream. The spring wasn't big enough to swim in, but it was deep enough to dive in and get completely wet and cool and with the summer heating up the way it was doing, that was exactly what we did. Our wet clothes, we took off and piled up on the bank. Five naked boys, we frolicked and splashed and dunked each other, played keep-away and did all the things that boys can find to do when they're in a cool spring on a hot day and after we were tired, we got out and lay out on the bank and looked up through the tree leaves at the small oval of sky. We saw birds of all kinds, and there was a lot of squirrels in the oak trees feasting on acorns, and a raccoon came to the far side of the spring, and boldly used the spring to wash his food before he ate it. It was a moment of complete and wonderful peace and belonging. By common consent, we kept the spring secret from everyone else. We don't know if anyone else knew about it, but we never saw anyone coming to it. The spring was hard to find if you didn't know where it was. The brook soon fed into a larger stream so it wasn't giving away the spring's location to anyone. Maybe we were the first who had seen this spring since maybe the Indians who had lived here so long ago. Our summers were set for the rest of our boyhood. Every summer, we five would gather at least once or twice a week to go to the spring, there to bask in the coolness and enjoy ourselves. Funny, as close as I was to these other guys, and though we swam naked and looked at each other, we had never touched each other's bodies. But every boyhood ends and so it was with us. Two of us graduated a year before the other three, but that was when we'd agreed to meet here again. The year after the last of us graduated from college, we would meet here and check on what we had all been up to. That had been the plan. Then Ron and Carl were killed in an automobile accident three years ago. Jeff was still in Iraq in the Marines. Just Bob and me were left of the five to keep our planned appointment, and Bob had been the guy I liked least of the five. And the appointment was this Memorial Day, here at the spring. It was supposed to have been so much better than it was turning out to be. Even Mom and Dad had given up the farm, and moved into an apartment in town. There had been quite a few changes in Benton County during that time. More people lived in the towns, fewer in the country. More and more of the land was going back to unused timberland. I'd heard there was a logging company buying up these lands, and several places that had held farms now had rows of pine trees. Something's very ugly about pine trees stacked in so many rows. I guess you have to grow up living on a farm surrounded by trees to see it, nobody else seemed to care. I parked along the edge of the road, off the verge and into some bushes. The spring, whatever was left of it, would be less than a mile into the forest from here. As I walked, I felt more and more like that eleven-year-old boy, walking towards nothing in particular, looking to see what he could see, at the start of summer. As I said before, I was paying a final visit to the past before I took off into my future. With things like they were, I didn't think I'd be ever coming back. The spring was still there. This part of the county was a part of the National Forest system. Meant to be left intact for our posterity. I walked up to the spring, the dogwood tree still in bloom, the squirrels as active as ever, the clouds in their unending dance above and the spring below, the same as ever. I sighed. I had found my past again, at least this small portion of it. "Thank God!" I said to myself. "Uh...hello!" came an answer. I started, looked over to the side, under the dogwood tree. A man was there, and he was stark naked...but it wasn't Bob! "Hello." I said to him. "I didn't know anyone else was here." Not quite true, but close enough. "I didn't think anyone else even knew about this place." the guy grabbed his shirt and spread it over his loins hastily. He was in his late twenties, muscled but on the thin side otherwise, a triangle of hair on his chest and a darker one at his navel down (what I could see of it), darker than the brown of his head hair. His face was lean and long, the deep brown eyes above the sharp, straight nose, and below that, lips that were slender but moist and friendly. "Kind of a private place." I agreed. "My friends and I found it, God, ten years ago. Back when we were kids." "Lucky you." he said. "I was working for the Forest Service three years ago, and ran across this place. Nice place to come on a hot day like today, isn't it?" "Yeah." I agreed. "So what, you come back to visit your family?" he asked. I explained about our agreement. "It's just me and Bob Farley left to show up here, but I felt I should come out anyhow." "The Farleys?" the guy asked. "The ones who lived just down the road?" "Yeah." "They moved to Ohio last year." the guy volunteered. "Wonder if he'll even bother to show up then." I said. "Shit! I drove six hours to be here." "Sorry to hear that." the guy said. "I got some beer here, if you want one." "Thanks." I said. He handed the bottle of Budweiser long-neck, and a church key. You can open a bottle of Bud by twisting, but the cap is such that its better to use a church key to pop off the cap. I did, and gave the key back to the guy and we clinked the bottle necks together. "Thanks." I said. "My name's Eddie." the guy volunteered. "Michael." I volunteered. "Not Mike or Mickey, please, Mike was my father and Mickey is a mouse." He chuckled at that. "Fair enough, Michael. Sit down and make yourself comfortable." "As comfortable as you?" I asked him, teasingly. A guy hands you a beer, you feel you can make a joke with him. "Hey, I didn't know anyone knew about this place." "Besides, it's a great place to go skinny-dipping." I said. "My friends and I did it every year growing up. A lot of good times here at this little spring while growing up. Sad to think that I'm the last one who thinks enough of it to come back." "Sounds like it was a good way to grow up." Eddie said. "Yeah, but it does end." I looked at the water. "I had some really good times out there in the water." I hesitated, looked at him. "You mind if I go in for one final dip?" "Go ahead." he said. "Not like I own this place." "Yeah, but I mean, I didn't bring a swimsuit or anything." I said tentatively. "Hell, fellow, I'm not wearing a tuxedo here myself, you know." "Yeah." I said. "So then, you don't mind." He cast the shirt aside with a flip. "Does it look like I mind?" His cock was a nice limp sausage between his legs. Dun-colored, nearly gray, uncut, and sizeable even in its slumber, I licked my lips looking at it, then up at his face, which was amused rather than offended. "I'll get in the water." I said as I turned my back and started unbuttoning my shirt. I could feel his eyes on me as I got undressed. I was down to my boxers. At that point, I sort of had to make a decision, if you see what I mean. Eddie was definitely offering, so to speak. The question was, did I want to take him up on it. Well, what the hell. I knew how to say no if I needed to. And swimming in this place in clothing was just plain dumb. I stripped off the boxers and waded into the water. The water was as cool and inviting as I had remembered. I sank into it, feeling the water paint its blessing all over my body. So many times as a boy, as a teenager, I had felt this water upon me, and before it had always been the touch of a friend. Perhaps because I was with my friends. But now...the touch of the water was that of a lover. I sluiced the spring's waters up over my shoulders, then squatted down to let my entire body up to my neck be covered. Then, as I had done any number of times as a youngster, I laid back and let my body float upon the surface. Above me, there was the pleasant blue of the sky and the pure white of the clouds, around that was a frame of the trees' branches, green arms stretching out all around, gently waving their benediction upon me. I heard the gentle sounds of another entering the water. Looked to my side to see Eddie walking into the water, toward me. His cock wasn't flaccid any longer, it was erect and alive, pointing right at me. For the first time, I realized that I had thrown my own boner while in the water, stroked into life by its seductive fingers. There was nothing left to say, nothing more to decide. Some time since my entering the water, I had reached an understanding. The spring had known I was coming. Known that I would be here alone, it had summoned Eddie to itself, prepared him for my arrival. Our lovemaking was not a fortuitous meeting of two strangers in the wild, it was as pre-ordained as the rising of the morning sun. Eddie felt it, too, for he knelt beside my prone body and this put his face to where he could and did kiss my body. Not my face, he didn't reach for that, he instead touched his mouth first to one distended nipple and that kiss was more arousing that any kiss on my lips could have been. As he kissed, his hands reached for my body, one touched my shoulder, neck, arms and onto my back in a single, fluid motion, fluid as the water, while the other touched my kissed nipple's mate, tweaked it awake and then slid upon my ribs and stomach, down toward my manhood. My hand nearest him was angled downwards, not floating as high as my body, and I felt the back of my hand bump Eddie's waist, and I turned my palm toward him and from there felt my own way so that when he caught hold of my cock, my own hand enveloped his and held it tightly. Eddie gasped and threw his head back, his breath hissing through his teeth. His hand pumped at my dong and now it was my turn to close my eyes and sigh in pleasure. Eddie's mouth returned to my body, and he was kissing down my length hungrily, trying to be seductive but aroused too far to be more than cursory with his actions, he was tremblingly eager to reach my manhood, and when he did, he abandoned all pretense and simply swallowed me whole. I felt my prod fall into that cavern and be overwhelmed in its warmth and then he closed his lips about me and I was enthralled, he lifted upwards and as he did, my joy surged in its wake. I groaned, tensed. And sunk in the water. You can't float and experience sexual passion at one time, or at least I can't. I lose my buoyancy, and I sank like a rock. Eddie's hand at my back is what saved me, I only doused my face and then I was turning to stand with his help, and then I was standing and in his arms, and we kissed for the first time. Long, slow and sweet, we kissed, and I ended it more than a little out of breath. Panting, I swallowed hard and said, as he nibbled at my neck, "This is all very romantic, but maybe we should take this back onto land." "Why not?" Eddie said and with his hand in mine, he led me back onto the bank and over to his blanket. He guided me ahead of him and I laid down upon the quilt, expecting him to join me and renew the kiss, but he laid in the other direction and I found myself again engulfed in his warm mouth and his own dong dangled over me. I caught it in mid-swing and we were soon in a feeding frenzy, our excitement churned us into a pair of pistoning maniacs upon each other. I hadn't felt such an urgency since my first time with another man back in college, when my partner had been a guy from my dorm, and the two of us had been more than a bit drunk, and it had somehow happened, the hands upon each other at the party, from there it was back to his dorm room and our bodies frantic as we moved in our need and our haste. Though our movements were as frenzied as it had been in that dorm room so long ago, here we were only two men hungry for each other, our only urgency was that of lust, and that was rising in its due measure by our mouths upon each other. There was so much in that lovemaking beyond the simple pleasure wrought by our motions and our hands as we stroked each other's bodies. There was for me as well the many pleasant memories of childhood, there was the pure beauty around me that I had felt here even as a child, that this was a place of untrammeled goodness, that the very air around us exuded kindness and gentleness and innocent happiness. I'd felt it as a child with my friends here. And I felt it now with Eddie. We could love each other without guilt or fear or dread, for this place covered us with its beauty and turned all that we did, all that we were, into that beauty. And the passion that rose within me was as pure as any I had ever felt, that it throbbed throughout me, purging me of all my past sins and distresses and fears, I could let this joy pulse within me unhindered, unfettered, undiluted and unbounded, and trust that the outcome would be only the best of what life gave to me. "Uh, mmmm-hmmmm!" moaned Eddie as his body's motions gave a certain shift in its tempo, I could not have defined it given all the words in the dictionary, and yet I felt it, it meant that Eddie was about to climax, that his body was past the long pleasant time of building up the ecstasy throughout his senses; it was now ready to pour it out into the world as soon as it had pressed it all together into one within him. "Mmmm-mmm-huh, mmmmm!" That same ineffable click occurred in my own mind. I had finished mixing the elements of my orgasm, now it was time for my body to gather it into a burning maelstrom within my groin, and from there to ignite that brief period of time when we leave our bodies behind and kiss the very cheeks of God, our eyes closed tightly for fear of going blind, and yet we yearn for that kiss to linger forever and burn our souls to a cinder that is blown away on the wind. And the tenseness of my muscles lent a jerkiness to my actions, I was being forced to divide my attentions, partly to my ministrations upon Eddie and partly to the growing storm within my own bowels, and my own groans added to Eddie's in the open air, to become one with the chirps of the birds, the chitters of the squirrels, the rustling of the leaves upon the spring breeze and the chuckle of the waters of the brook as it left the spring from whence it had been born, and all of these are life, simply life, and where is there in life that says we should ever feel ashamed of anything it has to offer? And then my mind exploded within my head, I was enveloped in the flames of climax, my body surged, I convulsed, thrust my organ deep into Eddie's mouth and my legs clamped upon his head to hold him there, and I orgasmed, thrashed as my spunk squirted into him, and he was groaning similarly with his hard dong pounding inside my mouth, unattended but present in my joy, and he gave a similar hitch to his own thighs and I was locked as he was, and then my mouth was flooded with his hot jizz jetting into my gullet, sweet and soft and salty and slippery, and as I pumped into him, his throbbing dong pelted me with his own pellets of sperm, and as our climaxes rocked us, we were welded into a single, unmoving being, only our groans telling of our life still beating within us. And only when our ejaculations had ceased, as our brains relinquished that exquisite ecstasy once again, could we unlock ourselves from each other and we fell onto our backs, two sweating, gasping, exhausted male humans in the forest unbrushed by civilization, and we were a part of that forest just the same, for we did not need to own this land to be part of it, for it had owned us for many, many millennia itself. We shared that day at the hidden spring, Eddie and I, and when the time came for me to return to my car and Eddie to return to his own concerns, we didn't speak of meeting again or exchanging numbers. And yet, I think that if I were to return now to that hidden spring, I would find Eddie or another like him there, waiting for me and ready to share again the special beauty that only a secret place like that can give. THE END Comments, complaints or suggestions? E-mail the Author at Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM WWW.TOMMYHAWKSROGUEMOON.COM