Heller and Shannon: Packin'

Snek, Slider and three others from the Kingsport group rounded the bushes and saw LR putting Shannon down from carrying her piggy-back over the blackberry stubble.

Snek hooted “Well played!”

Shannon blushed.

Snek was clearly in control of the contingent. “Mikey, run back to camp and let the guides know we found them and they are not hurt. They are gonna wanna know.”

“Slider, you and Bubba grab the first kayak while Tiny and I grab the other.”

Glancing down at Shannon’s bare feet he said “LR, I think you oughta stick with Shannon, cause she ain’t gonna be able to keep up.”

Apparently Snek and the boys were familiar with the path from earlier trips.

LR was looking at the ground near Shannon’s feet. “Those tracks don’t look quite like a deer’s track. What are they?”

“Them are hog-tracks” Slider said.

“Hogs?” LR asked. “Like Russian boars?”

“Pretty much” Snek added.

LR rubbed his chin in thought. Then he asked Shannon “Are you thirsty?”

“Well, I could use a drink” Shannon admitted.

LR reached into his fanny pack and handed her his bottle of water. “Keep it” he said.

Snek said “Don’t worry too much. They make a lot of noise and are scared of people...mostly. And most boars ain’t any heavier than four-hunnert pounds or so.”

“Great” LR said, sarcastically.

Shannon looked a little bit panicked. “Are you guys serious?”

“Serious as a heart-attack, ma-am” Bubba said. “Them pigs can really tear up a farm field or a stream...or a man.”

“You are pulling my leg” Shannon said.

“Ma-am, we ain’t pullin’ your leg. That’s one reason why we are all packin’” Bubba said.

That is when Shannon picked up on the fact that all four of the men from Tennessee had holsters on their belts.

Looking over at LR, she saw he was spinning the fanny pack around so it was in front and was rearranging the contents of his fanny pack so the butt of a handgun was ready-to-hand. Part of her realized that LR had given her his water-bottle because he needed more room in his fanny pack to facilitate its rearrangement.

Catching her glance, LR said, “I screwed up. I didn’t think about not having a belt but this will work.”

“YOU have a gun?” Shannon gasped.

“Not just ‘a gun’” LR said. “This is a Glock 19 in a Safariland GLS holster. It is a tool for certain kinds of jobs. Where I screwed up is I didn’t think I was gonna need it.”

The four men from Tennessee flirted with Shannon outrageously at the start of the trip back. Most guys aren’t that great at body-language but they could see that LR had a lock on Shannon’s heart if he wanted to put any effort into it. Ironically, LR didn’t act as if he had a clue.

They came to a stretch of trail where the rocks were small, glass-sharp splinters and Shannon had to slow down to a virtual crawl. The men from Tennessee kept going and left Shannon and LR behind.

LR had been the man-with-a-plan every step of the way. If LR wasn’t scared of hogs then Shannon wasn’t either.

***

LR and Shannon ate with the group from Tennessee and stayed for their campfire. The men had fully accepted both of them into their “tribe”. The guides made an obvious show of not seeing the firearms the men were packing. The men didn’t rub anybody’s noses in it. It helped that several of them had glued blue denim over the outside of their holster so it blended in with their cut-off jeans and almost looked like pockets.

LR, Snek and Slider had saved the guides a huge amount of embarrassment and paperwork. Nothing creates confidence more quickly than competence demonstrated without fanfare or fluff.

As the only woman at the campfire, Shannon was treated like a movie-star. She pushed their “Southern Gentlemen” buttons and they responded. She basked in the glow of their appreciation. And she never left LR’s side.

 

Most of the conversation was opaque to Shannon: 147 grain XTPs vs 124 grain GoldDots, Euro-pellets vs JMB's gift to the world, wheel-guns vs semi-autos, Silverados vs. F-150s, Memphis BBQ vs Carolina BBQ, concealed vs open. It didn't matter to her. The rumble of men's voices; often agreeing to disagree. Every one of them courteous almost to the point of being comical.

 

While there was so very, very much that she did not understand, she knew in every fiber of her being that each men at this campfire cherished her and would protect her to the very last drop of blood of blood in his body. Every man. Something that she knew, instinctively, was not true at the other campfire.

LR was at war with his emotions. He found himself responding physically to her presence. Every one of his nerves was jangling and intensely aware of every shift of the muscles in Shannon's leg that was entwined with his and in her frame.

 

It had been a long time since he had been with a woman and was afraid that he would lose control and tumble head-over-heels in love with a woman who was completely alien to his universe. How could that work?

Besides, at thirty, LR was no stranger to sex. He knew that sex made you blind and stupid. IF he and Shannon had a relationship, he wanted to ease into it. He wanted to see her back in Michigan where he was just a dumb guy with bruised knuckles and grease under his nails while she was one of those people who worked in an air-conditioned office. He wanted to sort through that before he jumped into the sack with her because it would be a lot harder to hit the brakes afterward.

For now, it felt fabulous to have her leaning on him, holding his hand. Equally intoxicating was that she had not second-guessed him nor competed with him. Not even once. Stephanie would have turned the task of cutting through the blackberries into a contest where she would do her part faster than LR and needle him for not keeping up.

Shannon had let him lead. Intoxicating!