“So, what did you want to show me?” I asked standing and walking around the bar so I could be in his arms. I thought he would hug me, but instead he lifted me onto the counter so we were face to face.
“Do you like to stargaze?” he asked kissing my nose, my cheek, and my neck. My breathing became shallow and my insides tightened.
“Yes.” I could barely speak. It had only been a matter of hours, yet I wanted to feel him inside me again.
“Good, because I have something I want to show you.”
Lifting me into his arms, Luke carried me out the front door and across the driveway. My first thought was that we were going to lie down in the driveway, but he continued on and into the woods. The trail started out narrow, but widened the further we walked. I wasn’t sure how far we had gone. He could not have been walking more than two minutes when suddenly we were in a clearing.
What I recognized as a shooting house sat in the middle of a pipeline clearing. Luke sat me down and held his finger up to me, asking to wait a minute. Then he opened the door and went inside, leaving me to fend for myself against wild animals.
I was starting to get a little nervous, but in less than one minute he was standing at the door holding his hand out to me.
“This is where I hunt when deer season is in, but any other time it serves as a great thinking spot when I’m struggling with something. Whether it be with the club or my family or my job, I can always come here and clear my head.”
Luke the Redneck-another personality to add to his many.
Inside the small shooting house laid an air mattress that took up most of the floor space. Windows were cut out on the side, but had been covered with plastic to keep the insects out. I watched Luke as he climbed onto a chair, undoing several latches and pushed the roof back revealing the sky. I jumped at the sound of the metal roof hitting the side of the building.
“I made a door out of the roof. Pretty cool huh?” Luke asked smiling at me. I laughed and nodded my head in agreement.
“Yes, pretty cool.” I didn’t really think so until Luke pulled me down on the air mattress beside him, and I looked up at the sky above me. Thousands of stars littered the black, velvety sky and the moon shone bright giving me a full view of everything around me.
“Wow,” I said gaping with my mouth open.
“The only problem is you don’t get to see all of the stars. Your view is limited because of the walls,” Luke said from beside me.
“I think it’s great. You know Lindsey has this in a bedroom.”
“A door for a roof?” Luke asked turning his head towards me.
“No, I mean she has this lighting system above her bed. You look up and there are hundreds of stars on her ceiling,” I said, still in awe of the view I had. Lindsey’s room was great, but this was amazing.
“You like it?” Luke asked rolling on his side and propping his head up on his elbow.
“What?”
“The stars at Lindsey’s.”
I turned to look at Luke and saw him smiling like he had some big secret. “Yes,” I said cautiously.
“I will put that in my bedroom if you want.” He sure was being cheesy tonight.
“I like this better,” I said honestly.
Luke rolled back over on his back and we laid there for what seemed like hours looking up at the stars. My eyes were getting heavy, but I wasn’t ready for this night to end.
“Tell me more about the club,” I said breaking the silence.
“What do you want to know?” Luke asked not looking at me.
I wasn’t sure what I really wanted to know, but as of now, I didn’t really know anything, yet I had been in the middle of it ever since I had met Luke. “Why do people do it? I mean, I know why you did it, but why does anyone want to go through that?”
He turned his head and raised an eyebrow at me. “Go through what?” he asked curiously.
“The prospecting thingy.” Relief flooded his face as soon as the words left my mouth. If I didn’t know any better I would assume he thought I knew something I shouldn’t.
“Thingy?” he asked laughing.
“You know what I mean,” I answered a little embarrassed. I never spoke like that and now that I had I felt like an idiot. He must have felt the heat from my cheeks radiating around me and took mercy on me.
“Everyone wants to be a part of something, to belong to a group or a society or an organization. Our club is no harder to get into than the Hattiesburg Country Club,” he said smirking. “The difference in us and a country club, though, is we don’t want you to try and be something you’re not. If you belong in this world you know it. You can feel it in your heart. If you don’t, well you just don’t.” He was now staring at me as if it was me he was talking about and not a prospect.