Gila River (L/M teen) [COMPLETE]

[greywolf]

Title: Gila River

Author: Greywolf
Couple: M/L
Rating: Teen
Disclaimer: I don't own Roswell or any of the characters. Please don't sue me, I'm just having a little fun here.
6 October 2008

Summary: It's not easy being a father, watching your little girl grow up. The hardest part is that you've never in your entire life been a girl becoming a woman. You really don't have a clue how it's supposed to work. Like all fathers who went before you, you are making it up as you go.



Gila River Wilderness Area, Southwest New Mexico:

The ten people on the patrol were from a number of agencies – DEA, Border Patrol, ICE, even four New Mexico Army National Guardsmen – exempt from the posse comitatus act since they were sent by the State of New Mexico and not the federal government. They were heavily armed, three of the National Guardsmen carrying M-16s, the remaining one even packing a Squadron Automatic Weapon. It was their ninth day hiking through the wilderness area looking for their quarry. So far all they had found were the victims.

The quarry was one Ernesto “Pancho” Gutierres, a Colombian national who had come up with a new problem for the United States of America, and a new way of bringing it across the border. Cocaine had been bad enough before Pancho and his cartel had decided that there was nothing so bad it couldn’t be made worse. Three years ago they had kidnapped some unlikely victims – a plant geneticist and his wife. The two had lived in captivity for almost two and a half years, the geneticist working on the coca plant to change the chemical structure of the alkaloids produced by the plant. The eventual result – other than the death of the scientist and his wife at the hands of the Gutierres cartel – was the production of a plant that didn’t produce just cocaine, it produced large quantities of something called cis –cinnamoylcocaine, a compound closely related to cocaine but markedly more potent and addicting.

The rumor was that Pancho and a small number of his henchmen were traveling north with all the cis –cinnamoylcocaine made to date, and the security had been tightened throughout the whole southern border. The informer who had provided the intelligence that Pancho and his men would be traveling north hidden amongst illegal immigrants being brought through the Gila Wilderness Area by ‘coyotes’ really hadn’t been all that reliable in the past, but the fact that he’d been riddled with buckshot only hours after making the phone call lent enough credibility to his claims to put this patrol out looking for Pancho and his men. Pancho’s weapon of choice had always been a sawed off shotgun loaded with double ought buckshot.

So far, the patrol had NOT found Pancho and his men. They had, however, found two groups of dead illegal immigrants, killed with a combination of double-ought buckshot and 9mm rounds that appeared to have been fired from a fully automatic rifle like a Mac-10 or an Uzi. Their working hypothesis was that Pancho and his men did not like hiking. He’d apparently forced the groups of coyotes and illegals to carry his merchandise until they had grown tired, then simply shot them – after raping the women – and pressed on with a fresh batch of “mules” from the next gropu of illegals to come by. So far they had come across nine people killed that way. One of the Border Patrol guys was Mescalero Apache, and he had been able to track them northward after a fashion, but they’d lost the trail last night.

But they hadn’t needed a Native American tracker to find what lay ahead of them They’d seen the turkey buzzards circling over five miles back, and as they approached what they were sure was going to be another group of victims the wind shifted and the rancid smell of putrid human flesh confirmed that they were almost at the scene of yet another slaughter. As they came in to the clearing there were four bodies, scarcely recognizable as human beings after the buzzards–known locally as carrion crows – had apparently spent awhile working on them under the sun. It was the worst crime scene they had yet come across.

Agent Bob Darrel, the team leader shook his head. The youngest National Guardsman, the one who carried the SAW, was on his knees emptying his breakfast onto the ground. Bob didn’t blame him. It looked like this had been a campsite – probably some tourists. One of the bodies laid sprawled partly over a sleeping bag and he stooped to read the tag attached to it. The tag was homemade, apparently from some summer camp. It looked like it said L…something Park…something – perhaps Parks or Parker – something like that anyway. The blood had obscured some of it and the holes from the double ought buckshot had taken off the rest. Bob wondered who L. Parks was, and just how much he or she had suffered before this ugly death.

72 hours earlier – Silver City New Mexico

“Alright, we still have almost an hour drive to the parking lot at the trailhead, and then the better part of five hours hike to our campsite. I don’t want the two of you to dawdle in there, just go in, use the restroom, get whatever candy you have to have, and get back in the car,” he said to the two fourteen year olds.

They scurried off quickly into the convenience store as Jeff Parker finished filling the gas tank on the stationwagon filled with camping equipment.

“My, aren’t we in a good mood…?” said Nancy Parker, a wry smile on her face.

“I know, it’s just that we don’t get that many vacations and I had been so looking forward to this for the last six months.”

“And we are going on it! So what’s with the long face and bad attitude the last hundred and twenty miles?”

“Well, I thought we would be doing it as a family.”

“We are doing it as a family, but you know that Liz is awfully bored by these trips. That’s why we have been telling her it’s alright for her to invite Maria to go along the last three years, to have someone her own age to enjoy the camping trip with.”

“That,” said Jeff Parker, pointing the gasoline nozzle which he had just removed from the fuel tank of the station wagon at a raven-haired boy who seemed to be buying a couple of candy bars, “… is NOT Maria DeLuca.”

“No it isn’t,” said Nancy. “I have to admit that when Maria got mononucleosis and Liz asked if she could invite another friend along instead, Max Evans isn’t quite what I was expecting either. But by the time I found she had invited a boyfriend…”

“No! No, thank God she at least made that much clear, Nanc– he is just a friend, a uh – lab partner, not a boyfriend.”

The smile on her face as much as said, ‘Well dear, if that helps you sleep nights, I suppose you can believe it.’ But what she actually said was, “So what’s the big deal then? Liz has someone her age whose company she will enjoy, and we have the whole damn Gila River Wilderness area, and all the good memories that go with it for us.”

“Yeah, well we can’t reminisce much about those memories with you in the girl’s tent and me in the boy’s tent…”

Nancy slapped him on the forearm, exclaiming, “Why you old horndog you. You thought you might get lucky on this trip if Liz and Maria were in one tent and we were in another. THAT’s what this is all about.”

“No it’s not,” said Jeff, starting to blush. Nancy’s eyes continued to stare at him relentlessly until he exhaled deeply, and said, “Well, I’ll admit I might have entertained that thought just a little.”

“Jeff Parker, we were never going to make whoopee in a thin nylon tent ten feet away from two fourteen year old girls, you can forget that fantasy, and stop blaming poor Max for ruining your chances. It WAS NOT GO-ING TO HAPPEN.”

‘Yeah, will you said it wasn’t going to happen three weeks before we were married when we went camping here too…”

“And it didn’t happen back then, either,” said Nancy, folding her hands across her chest and pretending to glare at him.

“Well, it came pretty close as I recall…”

Nancy’s face softened as she remembered that trip. “Yeah, it did … closer than you know.”

“If we hadn’t been about to get married within three weeks anyway, I bet you’d have done it.”

She pulled his head softly to her and gave him a gentle kiss, before whispering in his ear, “Jeff, if I hadn’t been smack dab in the middle of my period, you probably would have gotten your brains screwed out….but it still wasn’t about to happen in a tent next to Liz and Maria this trip, and you ought to stop being upset with Max for being along. After all, we did invite him.”

“Liz invited him…”

“After you approved…”

“Because she conned me. She knew I thought she was bringing a girlfriend. She got my permission under false pretenses…”

“Yes she did,” said Nancy, continuing to smile, “ but that was Liz’s doing, not Max’s. You can be polite to the boy at least.”

“Why should I be polite to someone who only wants to get in my daughter’s pants?”

“Jeffery Alan Parker, you will NOT say things like that. They’re coming this way – now be quiet or they’ll hear you.”

“Well good, maybe that pimply-faced science geek will figure out that I’m on to him, and be on his best behavior rather than playing touchy-feely with Liz when he thinks we’re not looking..”

“Jeffery, shush! Here they come.”

“Ok kids, got everything? This is the last stop before the wilderness, you know – Not forgetting anything are you, Max? Got suntan lotion? Deodorant? Toothpaste? Clearasil?”

The sharp dig of his wife’s elbow into his ribs sent Jeff into a brief spasm of coughing. “Uh, OK, since we have everything, next stop will be the trailhead 22 miles from here.”

[greywolf]

71 hours earlier – Parking lot of the trailhead to the West Fork of the Gila River Canyon.

Most of the packs were already loaded, sleeping bags slung underneath them. The few refrigerated items were taken from the ice chest and packed into an insulated bag that Jeff Parker added to the contents of his pack. Max and Liz put the graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate bars they had purchased at the convenience store in their packs for smore’s for dessert on the first night. When all was ready, Jeff reached under the carpet in the back of the station wagon and came up with the small shotgun.

It was called a “snake charmer,” and was a fairly common “camp gun” in the Southwest during Jeff Parker’s youth. It was a .410 single shot weapon that had to be ‘broken’ in the middle to extract the spent shell and insert a new one. In theory it could fire a “slug” that had the potential to kill a deer or coyote-sized predator or even perhaps a bear, but it would take an incredibly lucky shot for the short-barreled weapon to actually hit a vital area on such an animal, and it would also have to be very close range, for the barrel wasn’t rifled and the slug wasn’t very ballistically efficient – both of which cost the shotgun accuracy and range. But that wasn’t the real purpose of the small shotgun – at least not in the Southwest. The Gila river wilderness area had venomous reptiles in abundance – mostly the common southwestern rattlesnake. But it also had one of the two venomous lizards in the Americas, the Gila monster, named for the Gila River canyon where it was most abundant. This shotgun, like most in the southwest, was seldom loaded with anything but number nine shot, tiny pellets that lacked the mass and range to kill anything really large, but could be devastating to a rattler or Gila monster at medium to close range. Basically, the shotgun was deadly to these critters at twice their striking range and as long as it was loaded with the number nine birdshot, pretty much ineffective against anything else past 15 or 20 feet.

As he started to put the shotgun in a scabbard he turned toward the two teenagers and announced, “This is for camp security. Liz, I know you’ve been taught how to use this safely, but I don’t want you touching it unless it is a real emergency. Max, I’m a little reluctant to let you handle this since I didn’t get a chance to talk with your parents first. Do you have any experience with firearms?”

“Well, we always go to the National Park to camp, and my parents said it was illegal to even have a loaded firearm in the National Parks, so I really don’t know too much about them.”

“Yeah, what kind of a country is this becoming when we can’t even carry a firearm to protect us in the National Parks? Fortunately we still can here in the wilderness areas even though they are federal property too.”

Jeff Parker’s family had come to New Mexico territory two generations before it became a state. Such people are a study in contrasts. Intensely patriotic and supportive of the United States of America, they nonetheless dislike the federal government, due in part to how much of the Southwest is retained under federal control. In New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, a great deal of the land is tied up in federal government ownership. Native Americans and settlers alike had come to despise the bureaucracy of the Department of the Interior, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Land Management. The frustration of dealing with these agencies, akin to having to deal constantly with an unresponsive and arrogant driver’s licensing bureau, had created something called the ‘sagebrush rebellion,’ among many of the locals, Jeff Parker included. Both Nancy and Liz had heard the next spiel before, and were praying that he’d just shut up before he came to the next part of it – but it wasn’t to be.

“Yeah,” Jeff continued, “I think old William Shakespeare was right, …. First we ought to kill all the lawyers,” he said, aiming the small shotgun at a small yucca plant, and pretending to shoot it. It was only then that he noticed his daughter looking daggers at him and his wife, with her finger to her lips making a ‘shushing’ gesture while shaking her head violently. By this time Jeff had already figured that he’d probably stepped in it, but he had to confirm it…

“Uh, Max … what does your father do?”

Jeff managed not to wince as he heard the reply.

“He’s a lawyer, sir…”

“Well, I’ll bet he’s the only honest lawyer in the state…,” said Jeff, trying to put the best spin possible on his faux pas.

“Max’s mom is also a lawyer, Daddy,” said an obviously irritated Liz. Behind her, Nancy was also glaring at him.

“Uh, she must be from out of state originally,” said Jeff, realizing that sounded pretty lame even to him.

‘Dammit’ he thought, ‘this is supposed to be a family outing – a vacation.’ But somehow the presence of this stranger – this interloper – had converted what was supposed to be a pleasant relief from the stresses of running a small business to a social minefield where one little slip was putting him crosswise with his wife and daughter. It had never been that way with Maria. ‘If only we hadn’t had to bring this – this – lab partner along,’ he told himself, not for the first time today.

[greywolf]

68 hours earlier – Canyon of the West Fork of the Gila River

It had been two and a half hours of hiking with only three ten minute breaks and Jeff was already starting to feel it in his calves and thighs. At least the boy was keeping up, Jeff had to admit. In fact, he was doing pretty well for a city boy who hadn’t done much hiking. At the second stop Jeff had started to tell the kid he should have packed lighter, but then he’d noticed just in time that the boy was carrying some of the heavier camping gear that he knew had started out in Liz and Nancy’s packs. Apparently he had helped himself to a few of the those items at the first rest period, and was now carrying a pack at least as heavy as the one Jeff himself was wearing.

‘OK,’ Jeff told himself, ‘…maybe he’s not quite the Bill Nye, the science guy, sort of wuss I thought he was. That still doesn’t mean I want him hanging around Lizzy.’

67 hours earlier: Making camp in the canyon of the West Fork

“I’ll go down to the river and get some water,” said Max, grabbing the collapsible bucket. You do not make a fire in the brushy desert Southwest in mid-August without having water immediately available. The pinon and juniper was notorious for brush fires and even this close to the river, you simply couldn’t take the chance. Jeff Parker started pulling the main tent from his pack, while Liz reached for the smaller 2-person tent that Max had been carrying.

“I’ll get the little tent set up for Max and me while you get the one set up for you and mom,” said Liz.

“Whoa…what do you mean, you and Max?” asked Jeff. “Max and I will sleep in that one while you bunk in the big one with your mom.”

“But you and mom always sleep in the big one while Maria and I sleep in the small one, Daddy,” protested the 14 year-old.

“Lizzy, you are an ‘A’ student in Science. I do not believe that it has somehow escaped your notice that Max is of a totally different gender than Maria.”

“Daddddy…,” exclaimed an obviously vexed Liz, “..we are just lab partners – not boyfriend-girlfriend, and it’s not like we would do anything in a fabric tent ten feet from my parents, even if we were.”

Jeff considered briefly if it was a good time to tell his daughter that she was conceived about three miles from this campsite, with her grandma Claudia and grandpa James sleeping in an adjacent tent about ten feet away. No, he decided, it was probably too early to share that story by about a decade. After a brief look at Nancy, he revised that upward to at least two decades.

“On this one, I think I have to agree with your father,” said Nancy. That didn’t cheer Jeff up very much though because the tone made it obvious that there was plenty Nancy didn’t agree with him about – most likely the lawyer comments – and that she would no doubt be talking to him about that later.

“So you don’t trust me, is that it?” asked Liz, crossing her arms across her chest and frowning at both of her parents – although Jeff noted her eyes were on him.

“It’s not that, Lizzy …,” he protested, “it’s just that it really isn’t appropriate for a young lady to put herself in a position where anyone might question what went on, and a young gentleman simply wouldn’t want her to put her reputation at stake over something like that.”

“So you are telling me that you and mom never went camping together until after you were married?” asked Liz. She actually knew better than that. She’d seen pictures of the two in an old picture album that she’d looked through at grandma Claudia’s. What's more, she was pretty sure her parents knew she'd seen those pictures.

Jeff noticed his wife looking at him with an expression which pretty much screamed, ‘OK wise guy – how do you get out of this one?’

[greywolf]

“When you are significantly older and more experienced,’ he began, already noting his daughter’s darkening face. “..and I know your companion somewhat better than Max, who I barely know at all, there may be a loosening of the rules appropriate to your greater maturity. For now, Lizzy, all you have to know is that the rules are the rules…”

“That makes no sense whatsoever. How many times have I heard you say the expression, ‘there’s no fool like an old fool’. It’s not just kids that do dumb things – get themselves in trouble. Older people do too. And experience? How do I get experience if you won’t let me do anything? And as for my ‘reputation,’ there isn’t anybody but you and Mom and Max within five miles of here. What this really comes down to is that you don’t trust me.”

That actually wasn’t true. Jeff trusted Liz quite a lot. He had to, because she was often tinkering with things – like her Mr. Wizard chemistry set – that he really didn’t understand. What he didn’t trust was this Max guy.

It has been said that middle age was that point in a man’s life when he doesn’t want his teenage daughter to do the sort of things he’d wanted some other man’s teenage daughter to do back when he himself was a teenage boy. By that standard, Jeff Parker figured he wasn't just fast approaching middle age – he was definitely already there.

He wasn’t sure exactly when – the process had been so gradual for so long – but somehow his little tomboy daughter with the scraped knees and baseball cap had started turning in to a truly lovely young lady. Jeff Parker really wasn’t ready for that, so it went without saying that his daughter wasn’t either.

Moreover, the way she had mouse-trapped him into inviting this boy really did irritate him, although if he could have looked at it dispassionately he would have had to acknowledge that there was no other way the boy would have been invited, because he still wasn’t ready to think of his baby-lady having an interest in boys.

“Lizzy, I don’t want to discuss this any more. I am the parent here. When you have a child of your own, you can do things your way, but…”

“Oh, so the secret for me to become an adult is to have a child? THAT’S what I have to do to be an adult in your eyes?”

‘How does she always do that?’ he asked himself. ‘Her mother does that too. I say something, and just like that it gets turned around on me.’

The fact was that he knew both Liz and Nancy were better at this stuff than he was. Liz got it from Nancy. Had Nancy not married him she would have likely gone off to college, gotten a PhD or something, rather than being the wife of a small town restaurateur. That was one of the reasons he was so protective of Liz. Like her mother, she had all the intelligence in the world, and Jeff really didn’t want her to waste it growing up as the wife of some small town businessman. He wanted her to have choices. He’d told Nancy that once and she’d told him that she was happy with the choices she’d made – with her husband and her daughter – but Jeff Parker had always felt a little guilty about what Nancy might have done with her life, happy as the three of them were. And “were” was the operative phrase.

Things had been fine until Liz decided to turn into a young woman, and Jeff was pretty well convinced that she had NOT told the truth about Max being ‘just a friend’ and not a boyfriend either.

“I AM NOT,” said Jeff, trying to get things under control, “…suggesting that the path to adulthood is to go get yourself pregnant, Lizzy. I can hardly think of anything that would be a worse idea, actually. What I AM saying is that I’m the parent and you are the child and right now I make the rules – and the rule is that you are not going to be sleeping in a tent with Max. Max and I’ll sleep in the small tent, you and your mother will sleep in the large tent. It is as simple as that.”

“Well, could we just throw a tarp out alongside the big tent? You and Mom would be right there. Max and I could just look up at the stars and talk, maybe... I mean, we have separate sleeping bags. Even the Puritans let their kids do bundling, for crying out loud. It’s not like we’d do anything. Otherwise it makes it look like you don’t trust Max.”

Well, the honest fact was that he DIDN’T trust Max, and remembering what he’d been like as a teenage boy, Jeff really didn’t see why he should trust him. But Liz was cheating – the appeal had been made to her mother as much as to her father, and as he looked at his wife, Jeff felt even less comfortable.

You develop an ability to read your spouse’s body language over time. He and Nancy had been married for seventeen years, but they’d known each other over twenty years. The eyes looking back at him told Jeff Parker that his spouse really didn’t think that Lizzy’s last request was all that unreasonable – that it would be OK with her if he said yes, but that she’d still support him to keep a common front with Lizzy if he was just too uncomfortable to do that.

And the fact was that he didn’t think it was a totally unreasonable request really, but the talk about bundling – an archaic courtship ritual – told Jeff that his daughter certainly hadn’t been truthful about the boy friend versus boyfriend issue. Perhaps it was his own reluctance to squarely face his daughter’s budding sexuality, perhaps it was his resentment at her shading the truth about Max – either way he couldn’t bring himself to say yes.

“Lizzy, if Max is important to you, then he’s important to me too. I think that I’d like to get to know him a little better before YOU get to know him better. He bunks with me.”

“Liz,” said Nancy, “… here comes Max with the water. Why don’t you and he go gather firewood for awhile. We’ll need a fair amount. Go together and watch out for snakes, scorpions, tarantulas and Gila monsters. Your father and I would like to talk for awhile.”

Jeff tried not to wince as he heard his wife say that. He was waiting for the second shoe to fall about what Nancy didn’t agree with him about, and he was pretty sure that the crack about lawyers would be prominently mentioned.

[greywolf]

Max hung the collapsible bucket on a branch near where the fire would be built and he and Liz were soon off gathering wood. As soon as they were out of earshot, Nancy turned toward Jeff slowly shaking her head – but wearing an indulgent smile. “Jeff Parker, I AM disappointed in the way you are acting toward Max – and I’m not at all sure you realize just how important this is to Lizzy. Max isn’t just some guy to her. She’s had a crush on him – well, at least since the start of last year.”

“Well then that just proves it,” said Jeff defensively. “You heard her tell me that he was just a boy – not a boyfriend. On top of everything else, she’s lying to us.”

“I didn’t say they were boyfriend-girlfriend,” countered Nancy. “I said that she had a crush on him. In fact, I talked to his mother just before we left home and … well, I think Lizzy has sort of been pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, not just yours.”

“What do you mean by THAT?”

“What I mean is – well, Max’s sister is gone for a week to cheerleader camp, his father was scheduled to be at a legal meeting in Denver this week, and then a judge at the Superior Court in Las Cruces had to change her schedule and Diane – that’s Max’s mom – suddenly had to be in court there this week. Shortly after getting us to OK her inviting another friend after Maria couldn’t come along, Liz apparently told Diane that we really wanted to have Max come along to get to meet him, so Diane sort of coaxed Max who normally is pretty shy to accept our ‘gracious offer,’ the alternative being to spend a week in a hotel room in Las Cruces while his mother was trying the case there. Heaven knows what the boy thinks now after you practically suggested murdering his parents.”

“That was a Shakespeare quote – Macbeth, I believe. I didn’t mean anything by it. How was I to know the kid lives in Roswell lawyer central?”

“…and the Clearasil comment?”

“OK, THAT one was sort of a cheap shot, I guess. But at the time I thought Max was in on the maneuvering Lizzy did to get him here.”

“…and the comment about Max wanting to ‘get in to Lizzy’s pants?’”

“That was to you, not to Max…,” said Jeff, “ … besides, I still think he does – ALL teenage boys have that aspiration, they wouldn’t be human otherwise.”

“Jeffery Parker I don’t know what I’m going to do about you. Do you have any idea how important this is to Lizzy – that you get to know Max?”

“Well, if my errant daughter had really considered Max to be THAT important, don’t you think she could have just introduced him to me without lying to us about this and manipulating us?”

“And precisely when might she have done that, Jeff?” asked Nancy, her face starting to frown. A wiser man might have tread more cautiously seeing that, but Jeff’s irritation with Liz apparently was carrying over into his talk with his spouse.

“Way back last Fall – there was an open house we went to…”

“And Lizzy introduced Max to me then – and tried to get your attention, but you were too busy talking to the Sheriff about Kyle’s Pop Warner league football team.,” said Nancy, “ ..while Lizzy was not quite jumping up and down trying to get your attention to introduce Max.”

“Well there was the science fair – when we went to see Lizzy’s project. She might have introduced us then, if Max was there…”

“When we went to see MAX and Lizzy’s project, you mean. When your own daughter did everything possible to introduce you, and you went off to talk to one of your Kiwanis club buddies…”

“Well, we had that benefit coming up. Besides, there was the Christmas Music assembly, she had a chance then…”

“… and she tried again, but you were tied up talking over downtown business zoning, with one of the city councilmen, then again at Lizzy’s softball games, when Max was in the crowd but you always ran off to do something in the restaurant or work on some project as soon as you congratulated Lizzy, but before she could introduce you to him.”

“OK, OK, so maybe I do share SOME of the responsibility for not having met him previously. Still, I can’t believe you really approve of the way that Lizzy tricked us into inviting him?”

“Lizzy is growing up, dear. I know you don’t want to hear this, but the day is coming when you will no longer be the number one man in Lizzy’s life. Maybe this is only puppy love – most likely it is and that’s all it will ever be – but eventually she’s going to find someone and …. Well, even if that someone isn’t Maxwell Evans – it’s important that she develop the skills to handle boy-girl relationships. Certainly you’d rather have her doing that by introducing the young man to us – by allowing us to get to know him, rather than just having a relationship with a boy behind our backs, wouldn’t you?”

“Nancy – She’s fourteen years old. I don’t want her having a ‘relationship’ with any boy – not in front of us – not behind us – and certainly not in some pup tent on the other side of the clearing. And I don’t know what kind of father she thinks I am talking about ‘bundling’ with this boy.”

“Now Jeff – it really wouldn’t have hurt anything to let them put their sleeping bags side by side on a tarp and look up at the moon together and talk. I distinctly recall we did that.”

“Yeah, and I distinctly recall going from that to zipping the two sleeping bags together into one big bag on about the second or third occasion.”

“It was on the fifth occasion, and I don’t recall you being so upset by it then – in fact, I seem to distinctly recall you suggesting ‘shared body warmth’ on that cold desert night?”

“Yeah, well we were a lot older…”

“YOU were a lot older, I was three years older than Lizzy when we first went camping alone.”

“Yeah, well if I’d been your father, I probably wouldn’t have let YOU go either. I’m rather surprised that he did, actually.”

“That’s because my dad thought that YOU were a girlfriend. I really didn’t tell him that, he just sort of assumed it – and I didn’t tell him any different,” said Nancy, looking at her husband with a sort of winsome smile. “I guess the apple didn’t fall very far from the tree, in Lizzy’s case.”

“Well, just because her parents weren’t perfect, that doesn’t justify Lizzy trying to sneak one by us…”

“But that’s just it, Jeff. She didn’t sneak off with him – she invited him along with us. We ARE here, and nothing is going to happen between them.

Frankly, Max is so shy that I’m not sure anything will ever happen between them, but right now at least he’s very important to our daughter, and I think that you need to give the boy a chance. He isn’t auditioning for our daughter’s hand, and he isn’t ‘trying to get in her pants,’ he’s just a friend who she likes a lot, and I’d really like to get to know Max better if he’s that important to her. And the truth is, even if Max never becomes that important to her, if we aren’t willing to invite her friends – most especially her young men friends – into our company when that’s what she wants, what kind of a message are we sending? Is it that we aren’t interested? Or perhaps that we have no advice worth giving her?

Jeff, even though she slipped this one by us in a way, the fact is that she did create a situation where we HAD to meet him ….”

“OK, OK,…” Jeff interrupted, “You are right that I should have paid more attention at those school programs, and whatever I may think about Liz throwing a curve ball by me, it probably isn’t fair not to give the boy a chance. But I want this understood, for THIS trip Max and I are bunking together, even though under normal circumstances he certainly wouldn’t be my number one choice for a bunkmate,” Jeff continued, allowing his hand to drift slowly down from his wife’s waist to playfully pinch her right buttock.

“Jeffery…!” Nancy screamed sotto voce, breaking into a broad grin, “I think if you really want to keep the kids from getting any ideas, you might want to not demonstrate that you have them yourself!”

“Hey, I’m an old married man – I’m entitled to be a little touchy-feely with my spouse.”

“Yeah, well just remember when Liz decides to get a little touchy-feely with Max that you gave her the idea.”

“I’m not worried about Lizzy,” Jeff lied, “… just about that kid pushing her to go somewhere she’s not ready to go. Without someone pushing her, there’s no way our daughter would ever get herself into a situation like that...”

“Mmm-huh,” said Nancy with a smile before running her fingernails gently down the inside of her husband’s left leg, from the bottom of his camp shorts to just above his knee. “We all know that women can never be the sexual aggressor.”

Jeff suddenly pushed her hand away and fought to readjust his shorts, which were developing a suspicious fullness behind the zipper. “THAT,” he said, smiling back at her, “… we’ll take up in a more private setting.”

[greywolf]

As the two teenagers returned carrying bundles of firewood, all four quickly turned to the business of setting up their first night's camp. The tents were lightweight and came with their own folding fiberglass poles – the setup was relatively easy and they were quickly erected. The next priority was getting the first meal ready. What Nancy Parker had long ago christened ‘slumgullion’ was a mixture containing bite-sized pieces of kielbasa sausage, sliced potatoes, mushrooms, onions, corn, butter, and spices fixed in a single large dutch oven. While Jeff and Nancy prepared the sausage, Liz and Max quickly peeled the potatoes, slicing them and the onions, to add to the simmering meat. Soon the delightful aroma of hot food was rising from the cast iron dutch oven sitting above the single burner white gas stove. After miles of hiking to get to the campsite, the smell was heavenly.

As the sun descended the night cooled rapidly, and soon the campfire was the center of activity. The campsite was not frequently used, but over the years rocks had been placed in a fire ring and others – larger – rolled near the ring to serve as seats for the campers who would sit around it. The slumgullion was spooned out into the four bowls and – forks in hand – the campers settled in around the campfire.

Jeff and Nancy sat side by side and Jeff watched approvingly as Max sat across from them, allowing an empty rock between them so that Liz could sit nearby her parents. His approval, however, proved short-lived as Liz walked by the empty rock to join Max on his more distant rock – her right hip managing to keep in gentle contact with his left hip as she handed him a plastic soft drink bottle and opened the top of her own. Had it not been for Nancy’s ‘women as sexual aggressor,’ comment, Jeff might not have given Liz’s actions any special attention, but as he watched across the campfire it became apparent that her body never really quite lost contact with his throughout the meal. ‘Maybe Nancy’s right about Max being shy,’ he told himself. ‘Liz is certainly sending him signals in a fourteen year old girl sort of way – but he doesn’t seem to be receiving.’ Not that he wanted Max to, of course. But he’d have to watch out for Liz now as well as Max. That just doubled his problems.

The making of the S’more’s was as much a ritual of the first campfire of the trip as the slumgullion had been. With the main part of the meal finished, Liz pulled out the marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate bars and soon all both kids were frantically making the gooey treats. They served Nancy and Jeff first and then went back to their roasting sticks to roast marshmallows for their own S’more’s as well.

It was when Liz made a S’more and fed it to Max that it really hit him. Liz was in a light jacket and jeans because of the cold night air, her hair was in a pony tail, and she’d hiked nearly ten miles – much of that during the heat of the day. She was grubby, tired, and incredibly beautiful, and as she took the S’more and fed it to Max – shoving it into his mouth even as he protested that ladies should be first, Jeff could envision her in not too many years as a young bride, feeding that first piece of wedding cake to her new husband. The thought scared him half to death.

How had it happened so fast? Where had his little girl gone – the one with the missing front teeth, the skinned knees – the one who needed her father to help her with her homework? That was long past. Jeff was not even vaguely aware what a ‘quadratic equation’ was and the stuff she did with computers simply confused him. But at least he was still her protector, that at least hadn’t changed. She was still his baby-lady, and he could protect her from the things in the world that still might harm her, even though she was truly becoming a young lady and would soon be tryint to assert her independence.

No, she wasn't ready for that, not yet. She still needed her daddy to protect her from new hazards that threatened her now. Things like growing up too fast, and most especially things like Max Evans.

[greywolf]

Two hours later Jeff was still watching the two sitting together, trying not to shake his head. First of all, this was the desert – it was hardly like there weren’t plenty of rocks to sit on. Exactly WHY Liz felt the necessity to share it with her lab partner, was beyond him. Secondly, it was getting late, and he had hinted to his daughter at least twice that it might be time to say goodnight to the boy. Nancy was in the big tent, getting ready to get in her sleeping bag already. Jeff was getting tired himself, but he certainly wasn’t going to leave the two of them – Jeff shuddered as the words ran through his mind – cuddled up in front of the fire – together. He’d told them an hour ago not to add wood to the fire – that they should let it burn itself down so it could be put out before they all turned in – but neither had taken the hint - they just sat there looking at the dying embers.

“Aren’t you getting cold, Lizzy?” Jeff asked.

“A little I guess,” said Liz, snuggling even closer to Max – who seemed to have retreated as far as possible from her without actually falling off the rock altogether. That was hardly the response from Liz that Jeff had hoped for.

“Well, don’t you think it’s time that everyone hit the sack? We have about a nine-mile hike tomorrow morning before lunch. Then we are going to go another two or three miles up river to the upper Middle Fork hot springs to make camp. Everybody needs to get a good night’s sleep before that.”

“Ummm – it’s so comfortable here though,” said Liz, leaning into Max just a little bit more. Jeff was trying not to grit his teeth. To his surprise, though, he got some support from an unexpected source.

“I think your father is probably right, Liz – and it IS getting cold. It’s surprising how quickly it cools off at night in the high desert.”

“Well, some things cool off, I guess,” she said, looking with some disapproval at her father and a slight smile at someone who Jeff was pretty sure she had plans for that weren’t limited to being a lab partner. “… but we do have a long hike tomorrow morning so I guess I’d better get my beauty sleep. Good-night, Daddy,” said Liz, Jeff noticing that her eyes never even left Max’s eyes while she said that goodnight, “and good-night, Max,” she said with a warm smile looking up into the boy’s eyes.

Jeff gave his daughter a quick kiss on the forehead and said goodnight, not really trusting himself to say anything else. In another five minutes, teeth brushed, he was crawling into a pup tent next to a fourteen year old boy he didn’t really know well, but already was coming to dislike considerably.

[greywolf]

“Good night, Mr. Parker.”

The words came out of the darkness in the small tent, from the person in the sleeping bag beside him. As much as he would have liked to just ignore them, common courtesy demanded a response.

“Good night, Max.”

“Uh, Mr. Parker…?”

“Yes, Max.”

“If it makes any difference, I’m sorry about all this. It seems like you were kind of tricked into this. I’m sorry about that. If it’s any consolation, it was sort of the same way with me.”

Jeff couldn’t quite stifle a quick chuckle despite himself. “I guess we do have that in common, Max. We’re both males, and subject to manipulation by the female of the species at their whim – and I guess I was taking out some of my frustration over that on you today. I’m sorry about the cheap shot – you know, the Clearasil thing.”

“THAT I thought was funny. Not what you said, but the elbow in the ribs. It was about all I could do to keep a straight face when you were coughing and sputtering.”

“Yeah, well laugh while you can, Max. Your day will come. It’s a conspiracy I tell you, them against us. They say men are from Mars and women are from Venus, and I tell you, it’s close to the truth. It’s sure like that with Nancy. You are talking about something – you know, something important – some kind of guy stuff, and the next moment they are talking about something off-the-wall, completely unrelated. You ever get the feeling that the girls in your class at school are from a completely different planet?”

“Yeah. Probably more often than you’d believe, actually.”

“Well, get used to it. You are going to have that feeling your whole life.”

“Yeah, I’m afraid you are right.”

“You know Max, you really don’t seem like such a bad guy – for a teenage boy that is. Don’t take that personally – I was once a teenage boy myself. It’s just that – Max, you and Lizzy are only fourteen. I really think that’s too young for kids to start thinking about any sort of ‘relationship,’ – they just aren’t mature enough to handle it yet. It’s nothing personal, son.”

“Mr. Parker – If you are worrying about Liz and me – well, you needn’t bother. I don’t think there will ever be any sort of a ‘relationship’ between your daughter and me other than lab partners and – well just simple friends.”

‘From your lips to God’s ears, son…’ Jeff thought.

“We are just too – different,” continued Max.

Jeff knew he should have just left it there – he knew damn well he should have just not said another word – but somehow he couldn’t quite stop himself.

“You mean – she’s just a small town girl – a small businessman’s daughter, and you’re the son of two hot-shot lawyers? She’s not really in your social strata with your cheerleader sister and your brilliant parents…?”

“No Mr. Parker. You’ve got it all wrong. My parents – they’re good people, Mr. Parker, but they aren’t even our birth parents. They found us wandering in the desert eight years ago – they didn’t have to adopt us. What makes my sister and me different is – well – what went on before that. We don’t like to think of it – don’t like to talk about it, but .. well it just makes it hard, that’s all. But my folks aren’t like what you said.”

“Hey, I’m sorry, Max, OK? I didn’t know you were adopted – or that you’d had a rough childhood. The stuff I said about your folks – I was wrong. That’s just a stupid stereotype about lawyers – you know? I mean, lawyers are people too I guess, and I was just shooting my mouth off. I shouldn’t have insulted your parents, and I shouldn’t have made the comment about you or your sister either.

This whole situation with Lizzy has just gotten under my skin more than I would have thought possible. It looks like we both got maneuvered in to a situation that makes us uncomfortable, and I’m sorry that I took it out on you.”

“Apology accepted, Mr. Parker. I’m sorry that me coming along has been so upsetting to you.”

“Not your fault. We both got mouse-trapped on this one. Tell you what. How about tomorrow you and I take some time out to just do guy stuff. I’ll teach you how to shoot that shotgun. We can kill a few rattlesnakes maybe?”

“I uh – I really don’t care much for killing things, or guns either really.”

“Max, we aren’t talking about blowing away Bambi, or the last couple dozen of some endangered species. We are talking about common poisonous snakes here, we're talking about rattlers….”

“Our science teacher said that more people are killed by honeybees each year than are killed by rattlesnakes, and snakes are necessary to maintain the ecological balance in the desert. Besides, I’ve never really seen the necessity for a gun.”

“Max, you need to be realistic. Rattlesnakes can be dangerous and guns have their uses. What if someone you cared about were being attacked by a wild animal? What if your sister were being chased by a bear or something? Wouldn’t you want to be able to protect her?

Jeff heard Max sort of chuckle next to him. “You’ve never seen Izzy when she was mad. I sure wouldn’t bet on a bear in that fight. I don’t think she’d need my help, gun or no gun.”

Jeff just shook his head slowly, wondering just what kind of world Max thought this was. “Max, do you really mean to tell me that you wouldn’t be willing to fight for someone you cared for – with any weapon you could get, if someone you loved were threatened?”

The response Jeff heard at least sounded somewhat sobered – like Max was at least taking the question seriously this time. “I guess I’d do anything I had to in order to protect someone I loved, Mr. Parker. Anything at all…”

“Well good. Tomorrow I’ll teach you how to shoot a shotgun then. It never hurts to know things like that.”

“OK, Mr. Parker... if you'd like.”

As he stretched out in his sleeping bag, Jeff Parker felt rather pleased with himself. He’d promised Nancy to apologize to the kid for the lawyer and Clearasil cracks, and he’d done that. The kid seemed generally uninterested in Lizzy due to whatever sort of post traumatic thing he had going on about his childhood – Jeff hoped he got over that – maybe in about ten or twelve years, and preferably with some other guys daughter.

Actually, things seemed to be going quite well he thought – until he remembered Nancy's comment about females being sexual aggressors. It really didn’t matter what sort of hang-ups the kid had if Lizzy kept putting serious moves on him. Maybe the kid was somewhat of a wimp, a namby-pamby – but he was only human. If Liz sent him enough messages, even he might receive one.

‘Yep,’ Jeff Parker thought to himself. ‘… my real problem will be reining in that fourteen, going on twenty-four year-old, daughter of mine. If I can just keep her from getting too frisky, Max here ought not to be a problem.’

[greywolf]

52 hours earlier-

He awoke in a pup tent to the smell of wood smoke and bacon. Max was gone, his sleeping bag already shoved back into its stuff bag, and there were the laughing voices of two fourteen year olds out by the fire ring where a crackling fire was apparently already cooking breakfast. Jeff stuck his head out the door and saw Liz – looking like she’d just gotten up – being handed a plate that appeared to have bacon and hot cakes on it. The kid was an early riser – Jeff would have to give him that – and probably made Lizzy one hell of a good lab partner.

‘It’s your job, Jeffery,’he told himself, ‘…. to make sure the relationship doesn’t go past that point.’

Even so, he could see why Liz liked the boy, Jeff thought guiltily. He couldn’t actually remember ever having gotten up early on one of their camping trips to make breakfast for Nancy. Of course that was only because he was usually still cuddled up to her, he decided, rather than sleeping in a bachelor tent with Max Evans.

“Good morning, Mr. Parker…,” said a smiling Max Evans.

“Hi, Daddy,” said Liz, a trickle of syrup dribbling down her chin as she tried – as impossible as it would seem – to crowd a little closer still to the boy flipping pancakes on the grill.

“Uh– Good morning, kids,” mumbled Jeff Parker, debating what to say to his daughter about giving the boy a little more room to do his cooking – or to breathe, for that matter. Fortunately the immediate problem was solved when the boy stepped toward him and handed him a plate with a pancake and two slices of bacon before returning to the grill.

“How would you like your eggs? Over easy? Basted?” the boy asked, cracking a couple of eggs onto the grill - before Liz bumped his elbow in her efforts to keep herself as close as possible to him - driving the spatula through both yolks. “Uh – how about scrambled?” the boy asked, looking up from the grill with a smile.

“Scrambled would be great, Max,” Jeff replied.
‘It’s going to be a damn long day if Lizzy keeps acting like this,’ he thought.

"Do I smell bacon?" asked Nancy, coming out of the larger tent. "I'm not sure that anybody has ever had breakfast waiting for me when I got out of bed on one of these camping trips before," she said, looking at her husband with a sly grin.

'Yep,' thought Jeff. 'It might just be a damn long day indeed.....'

[greywolf]

46 hours earlier

It had been a five hour hike to get to the campsite just above the upper middle fork of the Gila. The tents were finally up, the camp was ready for the night, and Jeff was starting to relax. He and Nancy had frequently come to this campsite over the years – as had Liz once she’d arrived on the scene. Across the river was the reason for the trip here.

These hot springs weren’t the only hot springs along the Gila, there were in fact five different ones. One hot springs was only about a half mile from the visitor center – barely off road at all. But these were their favorite – unspoiled and remote – it took real effort to get to them but that effort paid real dividends once you got here. The river ran cold here, fresh from the mountains, but the hot springs ran in to the river, giving you areas where the river water that was anywhere from only cool to tepid – or you could go to the hot springs themselves – as long as you could stand it. The water in some parts of the springs was almost 110 degrees.

Nancy had taken her camera and headed off toward the river to take some pictures, Liz and Max were getting ready to ford the river to give Max his first look at the hot springs, and Jeff had just taken off his boots and put on his sandals. The area was as beautiful as ever and the gentle noises made by the moving water of the Gila made the setting so very peaceful, Jeff thought. It seemed too good to last – and of course, it didn’t.

Max had gone in to the small tent to change into his swimming suit – the river was deep enough that both kids might have to swim to get to the other side – and he was the first to come out.

“I’ll be a few more minutes, Max,” came his daughter’s voice from inside the big tent. “Could you go take the tripod to mom? I’ll meet you down at the river.”

“OK,” said Max, picking up the small tripod that Nancy used for her close-ups of flowers and lichens, and heading off toward where she was already busy taking pictures.

It was about three minutes later that Liz finally emerged from the large tent, and Jeff was immediately displeased. He was seeing just an awful lot of skin when he looked at Liz.

Had Jeff been inclined to be fair with Liz, he probably would have had to admit that it wasn’t a particularly risque’ swimming suit by the standards of the day. The halter top had a reasonable amount of coverage of her cleavage and the bottom was practically a pair of shorts, but the fact of the matter was that Jeff wasn’t particularly inclined to be fair with Liz – for starts, she had obviously used deception to attempt to turn a family vacation into a three day date and now was trying to – his mind hovered around the word ‘seduce’ briefly before fleeing to the relative safety of the word ‘attract’ – young Maxwell. Besides, he hadn’t actually even considered the fact that his daughter had cleavage before this very moment. Oh, he’d been aware that over the last few years she had developed a sort of unitary entity called a ‘buxom’ that had necessitated her wearing bras, but this was actually the first time that he’d considered that she might actually have cleavage, let alone using it to attract that young man.

The words were the standard ones that any father would have used under the circumstances, as poorly chosen as always; “Where do you think you are going dressed like THAT?”

“Dressed like what?” The words came out more as confusion than as a challenge. Lizzy was clearly in a hurry to join Max down at the river, and this seemed to her at first to be more a distraction than a confrontation.

“Dressed – if you want to call it that – in THAT. Don’t you think you are showing just an awful lot of skin?” Jeff asked, staring at his daughter’s navel and shaking his head.

If the sudden look on her face hadn’t already given it away, the slight bending of her head to the right as she stared back at him should have. The fight was on…..