Jason's Best Canoe Trip

Taken off guard, I went down a ways and had to get my bearings before surfacing. I broke the surface to the sound of laughter. Wiping my eyes, I saw Emily's smiling face a few feet from mine. The canoe was floating, upside down, right next to us.

"I'm sorry. That was all my fault," she said, stifling another laugh.

I scanned the area, trying to take stock of our stuff. Our spare clothes, my lunch, and our phones were sealed in the dry bag that was clipped to a crossbar inside the canoe and should have been safe. Cans of beer and bottles of water were surfacing here and there, the current taking them slowly downriver. That meant the bungee cord holding the cooler shut hadn't been up to the task. One of the paddles was floating next to me, the other was nowhere to be seen.

"No big deal. It happens," I said, trying to sound forgiving. It hadn't actually happened to me (dumping a canoe) in many years. It did tend to happen, just not to me. "Oh well," I thought, it was as much my fault as hers, though I was annoyed that she seemed to be laughing at me. "What is so damned funny, anyway. Did I look that ridiculous going in?" I demanded, my voice a mix of serious and playful. "You weren't exactly smooth and dainty like a ballerina there, either, Stumblebum."

"No. I didn't even see you go in. I'm not laughing at you. I'm sure I looked goofy as hell...well, we both probably did. I think sometimes when shit like this happens you just have to laugh." She was cracking up. "And what did you just call me? Stumblebum? That's hilarious!" My annoyance with her laughter morphed into admiration. I thought her attitude was awesome. Most women would have been seriously pissed right about then. It was a reminder to me that I shouldn't be a sourpuss about things, either.

I was able to stand where we were, but only just barely, the water coming to my neck. I had hold of the canoe and the one remaining paddle. We had two options: swimming the canoe to shore before righting and draining it or righting and draining it where we were. The first would take so long that we'd never catch up to our belongings (most importantly, the beer) that were floating away downriver. That made it an easy decision for me.

"Hang tight for a few minutes while I fix the boat," I told Emily, handing her the paddle.

"Okay, but some of us can't touch here, tall guy," she said with a smirk. "Can I hold onto you and rest for a minute? I don't want to grab that slimy tree."

It hadn't occurred to me that she was treading water (both of our lifejackets were floating downriver with the beer). I didn't blame her for wanting to avoid the mossy tree. "Sure," I said, offering my right arm, my left still holding the canoe.

Ignoring my outstretched arm, she put her left arm around my neck instead and pulled herself against me. That brought her face within inches of mine and the left side of her body up against my right side. The sensation of her soft, warm skin on mine was electric. I could feel her padded breast pressing into my chest. Her breath smelled like beer, which was strangely appealing, and those big blue eyes were fixed on mine. The closeness to her was intoxicating. I felt like a kid at his first school dance, excited by a girl's touch.

"So, what's the plan now, skipper?" she asked, expectantly, as if my brain could process anything else with her clinging to me like that.

"Well, hopefully, I'm gonna get the canoe upright and get you into it. Then you're gonna go save as much of our stuff as possible. I'll catch up to you when I can."

"Okay. I'm ready to be part of the plan," she said, eagerly and with a bit of mock seriousness.

"Alright then, whenever you've rested enough, let go that death grip you have on my neck and I'll get to it," I said, playfully.

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't pretend this is a hardship for you," she chided, a knowing look in her expressive eyes.

"I am actually quite put out by it, but tolerating it for your sake," I retorted, feigning seriousness.

"Uh-huh," was her response, her tone skeptical. She let go of me and resumed treading water. I took a deep breath, trying not to be so affected by her, and went to work on the canoe.

Being built like a proverbial lumberjack sometimes has its uses and this was one of those times. Ducking under the canoe, I surfaced beneath it and lifted it over my head by the supports that crossed its midsection. After allowing the water to drain for a few seconds, I jump tossed it in front of me, flipping it over in the process. It landed upright with a smack and looked no worse for wear. I was fairly pleased with my handiwork, but knew the hard part was still to come. After throwing the paddle onboard, I started mulling over the next challenge.

Climbing into a floating canoe from water more than knee deep is nearly impossible. There was definitely no way to get me back in the boat where we were. Given Emily's athleticism, my strength, and our size difference, I gave us decent odds of getting her aboard, but the devil was in the details.

For our first attempt, she grabbed the side of the canoe with both hands while I put my hands together underwater, interlacing my fingers, and provided a step for her foot. She stepped into my hands and I lifted, but the canoe simply moved away from us before we had enough upward lift to get her over the side. She wound up stretched to her full length between the canoe and me, laughing at the futility of our effort. We needed some way to keep the canoe laterally stable while pushing Emily over its side, but I only had so many hands.

The solution was readily apparent to Emily. "You're gonna have to hold the canoe still with one hand and boost me into it with the other," she said, confidently. "Hold your boost hand like this." She extended her arm upward, wrist bent, hand forming a horizontal shelf, palm upward. "It works like a bicycle seat. Trust me...cheerleading experience." She didn't explain any further, but it went without saying what part of her body would sit on the hand.

I hesitated, unsure what to say. It sounded like it could work, but the required hand placement seemed way inappropriate. Holding my friend's daughter, less than half my age and entrusted to my care for the day, by her most private parts, which were mostly naked, made me a little uncomfortable. For a moment, I considered ditching the reboarding plan altogether and swimming the canoe to shore.

Before I could articulate an objection, Emily read me like a book. "Geez, Jason! This is how you react when a girl asks you to grab her ass? If word of this gets around, you may have to turn in your man card." She was smiling tauntingly at me, eyes sparkling, looking adorable. "I've been lifted like this a thousand times and it's never been a big deal. I appreciate you being a gentleman, but it's not necessary. Now, let's do this." Again acting before I could even comment, she put both hands on the side of the canoe like before and extended her rear end toward me. She looked over her shoulder at me, eyebrows raised, waiting for me to do my part.

I chastised myself for giving in to her before even doing so, but I gave in just the same. Grabbing the canoe with my left hand, I ducked my right shoulder underwater as far as was feasible, formed my hand as she had suggested, and brought it up from underneath her backside, taking on her weight. My hands being very large, my palm was squarely between her legs and my fingers fanned out to cover most of her bare cheeks. It was like a bicycle seat, indeed. I briefly noticed the sensations of soft skin all around my hand and a distinct heat source at the base of my palm before I extended my right arm and shot putted her into the boat. The canoe tried to move away like before, but I was able to hold it in place with my other arm.

Seconds after she went over the side, she reappeared, looking down at me with a triumphant look on her face and the paddle in hand. "I told you it would work. You're pretty strong for an old guy. It felt like I was shot out of a cannon."

"Just go save our stuff, smartass."

Smiling mischievously at me, she dug in her paddle and got underway. I had been a little concerned that she would have trouble piloting the canoe by herself, but she fared pretty well, motoring downstream at a solid pace. Even so, she mostly came up empty regarding our stuff. She called off the chase a hundred yards or so downstream and waited there for me to catch up.

When I eventually got to her, I found that only four cans of beer and two bottles of water had been recovered, along with the lifejackets. Our second paddle was still unaccounted for, as well, but that was unimportant to me compared to the beer. There had been a good dozen beers and at least four waters in the cooler when we tipped. I had expected to rescue more of them and was bummed about their loss. Drinking beer--lots of beer--was an important part of my plan for the day. That part was in jeopardy now, especially given that Emily had proven not to be the lightweight I had expected. She had been matching me beer for beer. Between us, we needed a healthy supply of beverages to keep us going as we had been over the more than half of the float that remained.

It was some consolation to me that Emily had found my baseball hat snagged on a log. In the confusion, I hadn't even noticed that I lost it. Emblazoned with the words 'Military Police Corps' and 'Fort McClellan, Alabama,' it was purchased after I graduated from training there long ago. It was ratty and pathetic looking after so many years, but had great sentimental value to me.

After wringing most of the water out of my weathered hat, I put it on, bill backward in the fashion that had been cool in my day. I tossed one of the remaining beers to Emily and cracked one open for myself. Finding a spot in the shallow water near the shore where the rocks forming the riverbed were smooth, I sat down and then reclined on the rocks. The depth there was perfect, leaving all of me submerged except my head, the cool water flowing only an inch deep across my chest. "Let's enjoy this spot for a minute before we move on," I suggested.

"Okay," she replied, as she sloshed her way over to my location. Arriving beside me, she tested the riverbed all around with her feet. Having identified a suitable spot, she sat down right next to me and reclined to match my posture. Our shoulders touched, her left against my right. I glanced her way and found her looking back at me, eyes squinting against the sun and a wry grin on her face. Her breasts, ensconced in their padded bikini cups, protruded from the water like islands. Other than that, she was submerged to her neck like me. Our close proximity was again causing an involuntary acceleration of my heart rate. "So...why don't you tell me a good story from your police days?" she asked. "Dad says you have tons of them."

Looking away from her before she could notice how she was affecting me, I gazed out across the water at a gaggle of approaching canoes. I sorted through story options in my head, aiming for one that might be entertaining without being too dark or serious. It was a struggle to come up with something that met those conditions, but I eventually settled on one that seemed unlikely to bore or disgust her. "I'll tell a story if you'll tell one to me in return," I offered.

"Deal," she said, without hesitation. She was watching me intently, eager for me to share.

"Okay...so...one of my specialties as a cop was as a negotiator and crisis intervention officer. They would send me in to talk down suicidal and disturbed people and such. My unofficial nickname around the department, after I worked for years in that specialty, was 'The Tard Whisperer'. I know, it doesn't score well for political correctness, but it was meant as a compliment to my skills."

"It does have a certain ring to it," she allowed, giving a thoughtful shrug for effect.

"Yeah. Anyway, I was pretty good at that kind of thing later, but when I first got certified for crisis intervention...well, like most things, there was a learning curve." I glanced over and confirmed that she still looked interested. "It was my first week with the certification and I got called across town for a suicidal guy with a gun. So I raced over there, eager to do my deal, save the world, you know. I showed up and there were eight or ten officers there already, most of them senior to me. It was a trailer park and cops were in a semi-circle arrayed around one trailer, all of them behind cover of some sort. Their point of focus was a man sitting on the front steps of his trailer home with a rifle across his lap. When I arrived, because I was a crisis officer, the others all deferred to me. It was all my show from there."

The group of canoes I had previously noticed was passing by. They were a boisterous group and I paused for a moment to wait for the racket emanating from them to fade a little. As I scanned the occupants of the nearest boats, I got a couple of odd looks in return. One guy let off a loud wolf whistle in our direction. I was confused for a moment before remembering that there was a sexy young woman lying next to me and that we probably looked like a seriously mismatched couple to most observers. I had to keep in mind that while I knew we were just canoe partners of convenience for the day, nobody else knew our story. Imaginations seldom allow their owner to select the boring explanation when choosing from among several options. A rabid people watcher myself, I knew my mind would race with the seedy possibilities if I saw a similar pair together. My ego smiled at the idea that people were seeing us as a couple. At the same time, my body enjoyed the sensation of her arm and shoulder firmly pressed against mine.

Once the noisy crew was largely out of range, I snapped out of my musings and got back to my story. "I got there and I grabbed my shotgun from its rack in my car. One of the officers gave me the briefest overview of the situation. Then, in full-on Dirty Harry mode, I walked right out in the open and approached the guy, shotgun dangling from my hand cowboy style." I shook my head.

"I'm guessing that wasn't standard procedure?" Emily asked.

"No. Not in the least. But I was a headstrong moron who was too good for silly rules and procedure. Anyway, my unnecessarily risky approach paid off at first. I struck up a conversation with him from about ten feet away. It went well for a while before he decided he didn't want to talk anymore. Eventually, he just looked me in the eye and told me he wanted to die but wanted me to do it. He said he was gonna point his rifle at me and shoot if I didn't get him first. As he slowly brought the rifle up to a shooting position, I racked a round loudly into the chamber of my shotgun and dramatically took a bead on his head. Then, past the point of no return anyway, I doubled down on my stupidity. I told him, in graphic detail, what my magnum 12 gauge slug was gonna do to his head, how an open casket wouldn't be an option and all that."

"You were hoping to shock him?"

"Yeah, basically. And...it worked. Just as his rifle came up toward horizontal and I was starting to apply pressure to my trigger, a breath away from the end for him, he dropped the rifle on the ground and started crying. I took him into custody and off he went for a mental evaluation."

Emily was incredulous. "It worked? I thought this was gonna be a story about mistakes and what not to do."

I laughed at that. "It is. I put myself out there in unnecessary danger and forced an unnecessary confrontation. Even though it worked out, it was a comically bad piece of police work. Besides that, though, I haven't finished the story."

"There's more?"

"Yes...After the drama was over, crazy guy secured, his gun unloaded, all that...I was holding court near my patrol car, reliving the event with a hefty dose of braggadocio, other officers gathered around me. In the middle of my 'Officer of the Year' acceptance speech, I racked the slide on my shotgun to eject the round I had chambered during the incident and make the gun safe to put away in the car and...nothing came out."

"Oh shit! So your gun wasn't even ready to fire during the standoff?"

"Nope. It wasn't even loaded at all. I had used my shotgun at the practice range the previous day and never reloaded it afterward. There were no rounds in the magazine tube, so I racked an empty gun and thought it was ready to fire. Everyone there knew immediately what I had done. Any of them who didn't already think I was an idiot probably put me in that category afterward."

"Wow! You went from almost having to kill someone because of a mistake to almost dying yourself because of a different mistake." She summed it up well.

"That's the gist of it. I certainly wasn't a dumbass my whole career and I more than made up for it with good work later, but that was the signature head-up-my-ass moment of my early career. So, that's my story. At least nobody died." I shrugged.

"Good story," she said. "I can't imagine having a job where the stakes are so high and the consequences for any mistake are so permanent."

I was silent for a few seconds, trying to avoid a deep or serious police conversation. Those tended to ruin the kind of relaxing vibe we had going. "Your turn," I said, looking to change the subject.

"What kind of story do you want me to tell?" she asked.

"I want to hear about a time when you got into trouble. Speaking of police, have you had any run-ins with the police? That's the kind of story I want to hear."

She giggled slightly and looked at me with a thoughtful smirk. "I have, actually. I didn't really get in any trouble, but there is a decent story there."

"Now I'm curious. Go on."

"Hmmm...where do I start? At school, I live in a female athletics dorm. It's a six story building, taller than its neighbors. Sometimes, when the weather is nice, girls tan on the roof without much on. You know, all over tan, no lines?"

I liked where this story was heading already, which was probably apparent from the stupid grin on my face. She had answered the question in my mind about how her butt was so completely tanned.

"One day this past spring, a group of us were up there talking and the conversation turned to public nudity laws. Like, could we get in trouble for tanning like that? One girl said it was legal to be topless in public in Missouri, but not fully naked. She said her sister had spent a whole day at Party Cove, Lake of the Ozarks, and was topless the entire time. So, the discussion turned to whether we would walk around topless in front of strangers, and that type of thing." She paused, taking a big drink from her beer. Her face was fixed in a cute smirk. She appeared to be enjoying telling the story as much as I was enjoying hearing it told.

"My friend from cheer, Allison," she continued. "She's pretty well endowed and proud of her equipment, not generally bashful about showing some skin. And I had recently got my nipples pierced and wanted an excuse to show them off." I almost choked on my beer when she mentioned the piercings. Just a couple of hours earlier, I had her pegged as a prude. It was steadily becoming apparent how inaccurate that evaluation of her had been. "Long story short, we ran our mouths about how we'd go topless wherever, yada yada yada...Next thing we know, we've accepted a dare to go buy something at the convenience store...topless."

When she didn't continue, I looked over and found her scanning my face, eyebrows raised, checking my reaction. "What?" I asked.

"I'm trying to decide if telling you this story is a good idea." She had an almost nervous look. "I don't want you to think badly of me."

"First of all, there's about zero chance that I'm gonna think badly of you for doing some college dare." I looked her in the eye for effect. "Secondly, you can't possibly leave the story hanging there. You're too far in to turn back now. Let's hear the rest of it."