Volcano Saturday Night
by
Jay Bryan
Will he come?
Today is Saturday September 26, 1863, the day we agreed to meet, and the question still simmers inside me like it
has every moment since 1860 when I last made my way to him over Shake Ridge, down Rams Horn Grade, past
Daffodil Hill and into the mining town. Will he come? It had risen inside me, verging on explosion, every time I
rounded a turn of the wagon trail and strained to see the morning mist rising like steam out of the crater-like valley
which gave Volcano, California its name.
Crabby, my old mule, had known first thing that morning something was up. He nipped at me when I caught him up
and bridled him for that last trip out of my secret hidey-hole. He eyed the pack saddle and gear all laid out in neat
rows, bared his teeth and brayed until I thought every bandit in the hills was bound to hear him. But it wasn’t going
to work again. I tied him to a tree to let him get used to the idea while I broke camp for the last time. The cave
hidden behind a thicket and a lean-to where I had lived the past five years was the first hole I dug when I
prospected this little creek that eventually made its way to the south fork of the Cosmunes River. Smoke from my
fires in there found ways up through cracks and crevices until it came out way off so that I’d lived undiscovered
here, always being careful to come and go different ways so no path would give me away. It took me weeks every
spring to clean off the stink of the skunk kills I hid around every way that led through the hills, gulches and rocks to
my claim. I put so many carcasses along the creek above and below my place that probably even now its
impossible to get by them what with your eyes watering so much you can’t see to walk.
This claim’s been good to me. I didn’t make no $100 dollars a day like some of Colonel Stevenson’s regiment of
New York Volunteers did back at the end of ‘48 when we set up over on Volcano Creek. But I dipped plenty of gold
to live out the rest of my life down in San Francisco. I’d be there right now looking forward to a fine dinner on
Russian Hill if it weren’t for him. I’d have left a month ago if I’d had the nerve to ask him then. Tonight, though. I’ll
ask him tonight. Will he come?
A part of me wanted to stay. I needed the gold, but it wasn’t why I came west in the first place. I just followed the
men. I had been soldiering with Colonel Stevenson and got my first taste for gold and the good life after we went
down to the lowlands with winter on our heels. I came back in the spring with some buddies and was with them
when we found my friends over to Soldiers’ Gulch. Jack and Riley’s bones were intertwined so tightly even the
scavengers had been unable to tear them apart. They died together, froze in each other’s arms, trying to get
warm some said, but I knew ‘em. They more’n likely saw death coming and wanted to be together forever.
I spent the next couple years working other people’s mines. I didn’t really mind. I was in my prime and horny. I
liked working and living with men. Like I said, it was why I was here. I liked the smell of their sweat in the morning.
Well, I can’t say I liked it as much after most of the placer diggings ran out. Daily toiling in rivers and streams tends
to keep the gaminess down a bit. When the only work was in the dry mines, even I balked at bodies so long
unwashed. It’s not like I could sample the pleasures in camp anyway.
I was handsome with a full head of black hair over an undeniably Italian face. My body was hard, muscular from
working, and I got my nickname “Bear” because of my size and the thick furry coat which kept me warm enough to
put in a few extra weeks each fall when other guys were hitting out for the lowlands again. I’d not be bragging to
tell you what few ladies there was always took a shine to me, but I wanted nothing but a bit of company from them
when I went into town on a Saturday night. Pretty soon they figured out I wasn’t good for no twenty-dollar gold
piece so they just hung out with me talking between their “business trips.” All them women around me tended to
make my reputation as a ladies’ man and nobody ever minded spending a night sharing a bed with me. A private
room and bed was too expensive for most. Strangers in a bed was what you just naturally came to expect. drunk
strangers in a bed. But I never drank much myself, although I was pretty good at play acting it. I don’t know if all
those men were really that drunk or they just needed relief enough to pretend they didn’t “member much ‘bout last
night.”
Jocko said it, too, after that first night we shared a bed in the Eureka Hotel. The memory of that night, and others
after, made my groin harden and my belly tighten and my breath come in panting gasps until I had to plunge into
the icy stream. I couldn’t take care of it myself, not today when I want everything saved for him. I removed my old,
tattered work clothes and rinsed them in the stream. I came dripping naked out of the creek, my thick hair matted
against my body as rivulets of cold water coursed downward. My nipples grew hard and erect, my balls headed
north for warmer climes.
Crabby reared up though he’d seen me naked many times before. Working naked made what few clothes I had
last a lot longer. I finally got the pack saddle on Crabby and the extra-heavy load pissed him off. He snorted and
tried to bite me but I just left him standing there to think it over while I grabbed up my best clothes and boots and
put them on a dry rock by the river. Memories of Jocko were rising again and I grabbed up that bar of soap I been
saving and plunged into the creek.
I usually didn’t use much soap in camp because I was afraid the suds floating downstream would give me away. It
didn’t matter today. I sat down in the fast current of the shallows which swirled around them rocks where my
biggest nuggets had waited all them years for me to claim them. I rubbed my body hard with the soap to keep the
blood flowing. Even memories couldn’t warm everything up in this cold water, but as I cradled my balls in my soapy
hands and made long slow strokes along the length of my cock, I knew I better not tempt fate. I wanted to save it
for him.
Will he come?
That first night in the Eureka Hotel he had stretched his body in the dark as he lay there watching the lacy curtains
blow in a gentle breeze until his breathing changed and he snored like he was asleep. I smelled likker on him.
When he came into the room his clothes had smelled of tobacco from the saloons, but his teeth were white and
unstained. I could tell he’d bought a bath tonight but he hadn’t let Old Sally pour in the lilac water that would hide
the pungent fresh sweat in his grey beard and on his smooth skin. Smooth skin which teased my body under the
covers so that I couldn’t resist rubbing my hairy ass gently against him as he lay on his side, his hot breath on my
neck. When he didn’t pull away, I reached behind me and touched his hip. Still he didn’t move. I turned slowly,
afraid to wake him, until my own breath mingled with his and I kissed his lips with a glancing touch. I lay there a
long time just inhaling him, savoring, anticipating.
I caressed his belly and traced the fine fuzz line gently until the touch of his full curly crotch made my breath catch
with a groan. I froze. God, don’t let him wake up now. The answer to my prayer was a gentle reassuring snore.
I inched onward through the brush until my finger touched a rigid vein pulsing hot. It was hard to not grasp the full
thick cock but the risk was too great. I felt rather than heard the snoring which never wavered. I could stand it no
longer. I slid down under the sheet and slowly, slowly slipped my lips over the tip, explored his foreskin with my
tongue, then down, down, down the shaft until my throat pulsed with him. The taste----
Crabby’s braying brought me back and kept me from the brink. I plunged my body and head under the water to
rinse away the soap and the memory. I jumped up and ran through the shallows to the shore where I toweled dry
in the sun. As I pulled on my clothes, other memories spurred me on.
That first morning we had breakfast together he had said he “didn’t ‘member much ‘bout last night.” He never said
it again over those other breakfasts, but neither did he let on he might have been awake as he came in the
summer nights in town. At that last breakfast I told him I was going to close down my claim at the end of the
season and go down to San Francisco. I wanted to ask him to join me then, but he turned his eyes from mine and I
was afraid. Instead, I asked him to meet me in a month. Today. Will he come?
Will he come again? He didn’t leave me when I told him I loved him. He didn’t turn away when I told him I wanted to
spend the rest of our lives together. We lingered over breakfast in the hotel dining room after every one else had
left. He looked around carefully, and reached over to quickly touch my hand before he pulled it back.
He cleared his throat and said, “I can’t say those things to you. Not yet. It’s...It’s not what I thought I’d be doing
when I became a man.” He shifted in his chair, swallowed hard. “I need some time. Will you meet me here? In
three years, when I’ve sent enough money back home to keep my sisters alive? When I can call my life my own?”
Will he come? Dread had filled me since I came into town and found the old wooden Eureka Hotel gone, burned
to the ground. Out of its ashes the St. George Hotel had risen to be the tallest and most elegant hotel in the
Mother Lode. What if he was gone, too? I’d spent hours in the Volcano cemetery searching through iron fences
and gates, peering at wooden and stone headstones, fearing to find his name.
I checked into the hotel. The Red Dog Room, like all the others, had no locks on the door. I waited there in the
corner room on the third floor, the lace curtains stirring in the breezy memories. When I could sit in the rocker and
wait no longer, I moved through the floor to ceiling double windows onto the porch which encircled the brick hotel.
The afternoon was hot from the sun, but the chill of night came quickly with the shadows on the peaks towering
around the town. The dirt street was alive with miners in for Saturday night. I watched the road across the bridge
over the creek and back up the road winding down from the mountain, wondering if every swirl of dust along the
road was him. Smells and sounds drifted up from the saloons and restaurants in the street below: steaks sizzling,
beer fizzing, perfumes, harpsichords, fiddles, singing, horses, leather, boots on wooden sidewalks, men sweating
pissing. A working girl giggled in the next room and bed springs squeaked slowly, rhythmically at first then built to
a crescendo of harmonic chaos.
Will he come tonight?
A knock on the door! I stumbled up from the porch chair and through the window, almost tangling hopelessly in
the long curtains. The room was dark now with only the light of Saturday night beckoning from the street below.
Another knock. I paused with my sweating hand fingering the door handle, took a deep breath and flung it open.
Will he come?
The End
Jay Bryan
Will he come?
Today is Saturday September 26, 1863, the day we agreed to meet, and the question still simmers inside me like it
has every moment since 1860 when I last made my way to him over Shake Ridge, down Rams Horn Grade, past
Daffodil Hill and into the mining town. Will he come? It had risen inside me, verging on explosion, every time I
rounded a turn of the wagon trail and strained to see the morning mist rising like steam out of the crater-like valley
which gave Volcano, California its name.
Crabby, my old mule, had known first thing that morning something was up. He nipped at me when I caught him up
and bridled him for that last trip out of my secret hidey-hole. He eyed the pack saddle and gear all laid out in neat
rows, bared his teeth and brayed until I thought every bandit in the hills was bound to hear him. But it wasn’t going
to work again. I tied him to a tree to let him get used to the idea while I broke camp for the last time. The cave
hidden behind a thicket and a lean-to where I had lived the past five years was the first hole I dug when I
prospected this little creek that eventually made its way to the south fork of the Cosmunes River. Smoke from my
fires in there found ways up through cracks and crevices until it came out way off so that I’d lived undiscovered
here, always being careful to come and go different ways so no path would give me away. It took me weeks every
spring to clean off the stink of the skunk kills I hid around every way that led through the hills, gulches and rocks to
my claim. I put so many carcasses along the creek above and below my place that probably even now its
impossible to get by them what with your eyes watering so much you can’t see to walk.
This claim’s been good to me. I didn’t make no $100 dollars a day like some of Colonel Stevenson’s regiment of
New York Volunteers did back at the end of ‘48 when we set up over on Volcano Creek. But I dipped plenty of gold
to live out the rest of my life down in San Francisco. I’d be there right now looking forward to a fine dinner on
Russian Hill if it weren’t for him. I’d have left a month ago if I’d had the nerve to ask him then. Tonight, though. I’ll
ask him tonight. Will he come?
A part of me wanted to stay. I needed the gold, but it wasn’t why I came west in the first place. I just followed the
men. I had been soldiering with Colonel Stevenson and got my first taste for gold and the good life after we went
down to the lowlands with winter on our heels. I came back in the spring with some buddies and was with them
when we found my friends over to Soldiers’ Gulch. Jack and Riley’s bones were intertwined so tightly even the
scavengers had been unable to tear them apart. They died together, froze in each other’s arms, trying to get
warm some said, but I knew ‘em. They more’n likely saw death coming and wanted to be together forever.
I spent the next couple years working other people’s mines. I didn’t really mind. I was in my prime and horny. I
liked working and living with men. Like I said, it was why I was here. I liked the smell of their sweat in the morning.
Well, I can’t say I liked it as much after most of the placer diggings ran out. Daily toiling in rivers and streams tends
to keep the gaminess down a bit. When the only work was in the dry mines, even I balked at bodies so long
unwashed. It’s not like I could sample the pleasures in camp anyway.
I was handsome with a full head of black hair over an undeniably Italian face. My body was hard, muscular from
working, and I got my nickname “Bear” because of my size and the thick furry coat which kept me warm enough to
put in a few extra weeks each fall when other guys were hitting out for the lowlands again. I’d not be bragging to
tell you what few ladies there was always took a shine to me, but I wanted nothing but a bit of company from them
when I went into town on a Saturday night. Pretty soon they figured out I wasn’t good for no twenty-dollar gold
piece so they just hung out with me talking between their “business trips.” All them women around me tended to
make my reputation as a ladies’ man and nobody ever minded spending a night sharing a bed with me. A private
room and bed was too expensive for most. Strangers in a bed was what you just naturally came to expect. drunk
strangers in a bed. But I never drank much myself, although I was pretty good at play acting it. I don’t know if all
those men were really that drunk or they just needed relief enough to pretend they didn’t “member much ‘bout last
night.”
Jocko said it, too, after that first night we shared a bed in the Eureka Hotel. The memory of that night, and others
after, made my groin harden and my belly tighten and my breath come in panting gasps until I had to plunge into
the icy stream. I couldn’t take care of it myself, not today when I want everything saved for him. I removed my old,
tattered work clothes and rinsed them in the stream. I came dripping naked out of the creek, my thick hair matted
against my body as rivulets of cold water coursed downward. My nipples grew hard and erect, my balls headed
north for warmer climes.
Crabby reared up though he’d seen me naked many times before. Working naked made what few clothes I had
last a lot longer. I finally got the pack saddle on Crabby and the extra-heavy load pissed him off. He snorted and
tried to bite me but I just left him standing there to think it over while I grabbed up my best clothes and boots and
put them on a dry rock by the river. Memories of Jocko were rising again and I grabbed up that bar of soap I been
saving and plunged into the creek.
I usually didn’t use much soap in camp because I was afraid the suds floating downstream would give me away. It
didn’t matter today. I sat down in the fast current of the shallows which swirled around them rocks where my
biggest nuggets had waited all them years for me to claim them. I rubbed my body hard with the soap to keep the
blood flowing. Even memories couldn’t warm everything up in this cold water, but as I cradled my balls in my soapy
hands and made long slow strokes along the length of my cock, I knew I better not tempt fate. I wanted to save it
for him.
Will he come?
That first night in the Eureka Hotel he had stretched his body in the dark as he lay there watching the lacy curtains
blow in a gentle breeze until his breathing changed and he snored like he was asleep. I smelled likker on him.
When he came into the room his clothes had smelled of tobacco from the saloons, but his teeth were white and
unstained. I could tell he’d bought a bath tonight but he hadn’t let Old Sally pour in the lilac water that would hide
the pungent fresh sweat in his grey beard and on his smooth skin. Smooth skin which teased my body under the
covers so that I couldn’t resist rubbing my hairy ass gently against him as he lay on his side, his hot breath on my
neck. When he didn’t pull away, I reached behind me and touched his hip. Still he didn’t move. I turned slowly,
afraid to wake him, until my own breath mingled with his and I kissed his lips with a glancing touch. I lay there a
long time just inhaling him, savoring, anticipating.
I caressed his belly and traced the fine fuzz line gently until the touch of his full curly crotch made my breath catch
with a groan. I froze. God, don’t let him wake up now. The answer to my prayer was a gentle reassuring snore.
I inched onward through the brush until my finger touched a rigid vein pulsing hot. It was hard to not grasp the full
thick cock but the risk was too great. I felt rather than heard the snoring which never wavered. I could stand it no
longer. I slid down under the sheet and slowly, slowly slipped my lips over the tip, explored his foreskin with my
tongue, then down, down, down the shaft until my throat pulsed with him. The taste----
Crabby’s braying brought me back and kept me from the brink. I plunged my body and head under the water to
rinse away the soap and the memory. I jumped up and ran through the shallows to the shore where I toweled dry
in the sun. As I pulled on my clothes, other memories spurred me on.
That first morning we had breakfast together he had said he “didn’t ‘member much ‘bout last night.” He never said
it again over those other breakfasts, but neither did he let on he might have been awake as he came in the
summer nights in town. At that last breakfast I told him I was going to close down my claim at the end of the
season and go down to San Francisco. I wanted to ask him to join me then, but he turned his eyes from mine and I
was afraid. Instead, I asked him to meet me in a month. Today. Will he come?
Will he come again? He didn’t leave me when I told him I loved him. He didn’t turn away when I told him I wanted to
spend the rest of our lives together. We lingered over breakfast in the hotel dining room after every one else had
left. He looked around carefully, and reached over to quickly touch my hand before he pulled it back.
He cleared his throat and said, “I can’t say those things to you. Not yet. It’s...It’s not what I thought I’d be doing
when I became a man.” He shifted in his chair, swallowed hard. “I need some time. Will you meet me here? In
three years, when I’ve sent enough money back home to keep my sisters alive? When I can call my life my own?”
Will he come? Dread had filled me since I came into town and found the old wooden Eureka Hotel gone, burned
to the ground. Out of its ashes the St. George Hotel had risen to be the tallest and most elegant hotel in the
Mother Lode. What if he was gone, too? I’d spent hours in the Volcano cemetery searching through iron fences
and gates, peering at wooden and stone headstones, fearing to find his name.
I checked into the hotel. The Red Dog Room, like all the others, had no locks on the door. I waited there in the
corner room on the third floor, the lace curtains stirring in the breezy memories. When I could sit in the rocker and
wait no longer, I moved through the floor to ceiling double windows onto the porch which encircled the brick hotel.
The afternoon was hot from the sun, but the chill of night came quickly with the shadows on the peaks towering
around the town. The dirt street was alive with miners in for Saturday night. I watched the road across the bridge
over the creek and back up the road winding down from the mountain, wondering if every swirl of dust along the
road was him. Smells and sounds drifted up from the saloons and restaurants in the street below: steaks sizzling,
beer fizzing, perfumes, harpsichords, fiddles, singing, horses, leather, boots on wooden sidewalks, men sweating
pissing. A working girl giggled in the next room and bed springs squeaked slowly, rhythmically at first then built to
a crescendo of harmonic chaos.
Will he come tonight?
A knock on the door! I stumbled up from the porch chair and through the window, almost tangling hopelessly in
the long curtains. The room was dark now with only the light of Saturday night beckoning from the street below.
Another knock. I paused with my sweating hand fingering the door handle, took a deep breath and flung it open.
Will he come?
The End
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