dontravis.com blog post #559
Let’s
start a new story this week, a three-parter about a guy with a history returning
to his hometown to find the kid who used to idolize him has grown into a hunky,
handsome young man. But given the recent tragedy in his life, can he advantage
the situation?
Here we go.
“Take the shot,” I whispered as the
four-point buck left the cover of the pine forest and hesitantly stepped onto
the narrow meadow. The animal took a long look around before carefully lowering
his head to the pale autumn grass.
“Me!” Markey gasped aloud. The white
tail’s head shot up, ears flicking nervously. The animals were skittish as hell
this late in the season. We had glimpsed a button buck and a spike, both of
which were legal, but this was our first decent shot of the hunt.
“Yes, you!” I hissed. “Take it.” For
someone who had been so blessed eager to come on the hunt, Marcus Markey seemed
downright reluctant to pull the trigger. “Markey, point that fucking rifle and shoot.”
I allowed a little exasperation to seep into my voice, knowing that would
motivate him.
He eased the Remington thirty-aught-six
over the edge of the blind and took a bead. I watched as he drew a breath, held
it, and squeezed. Judging from the stricken look on his face as the report
echoed against the far hills, his aim had been good. The second last thing the
kid desired was to kill a living animal; the very last thing was to look
like a pussy to someone he looked up to…and that would be me.
There was a gulp, and the strangled words.
“Got him.”
“Good shot, buddy. Your first kill.”
“Yeah…kill,” he responded with another
gulp.
“Well, let’s go collect him,” I said,
leaving the blind and starting down the hill.
My name is Daniel Chamberlain, and I had
recently returned to my Oklahoma hometown of Victor for the first time in
fifteen, tumultuous years. If the navy had tamed my wild side, the SEALS handed
it back in spades. You will neither read nor hear news reports about the
clandestine missions I’d been on, but I have killed and collected commendations
for the killing. Quiet heroes, the SecNav once said of my team.
Doubtless, I would have finished out my
career and retired to a restless pastoral life of secret memories had it not
been for Beet. When Beet—Warren Borak—a lithe, dangerous man four years my
senior, took a nineteen-year-old tadpole under his wing, neither of us
suspected powerful forces had been unleashed. He guided me, counseled me,
nurtured me, and protected me. And one memorable, moonless night in Lebanon,
fucked me vigorously in the excitement of an especially brutal action while we
waited for the team to reassemble.
My life was never the same after that. Nor
was my future…our future. Ten years into my enlistment, Beet and I got drunk
with some buddies in Naples where our physical attraction for one another
surfaced. We were kicked out of the navy in record time and with as little
fanfare as possible.
We became mercenaries, fighting for causes
just and not-so-just all over Africa and Southeast Asia. Happy and open about
our relationship, we dared the macho world of mercenaries to do something about
it, but those intrepid warriors didn’t give a shit. So we hired out for buckets
full of money to do what our government had trained us to do for peanuts.
Then last year, my beautiful Beet…a
nickname hung on him by the SEALS…died in a firefight with a vicious gang in
Africa. That he, a superbly trained professional, should die at the hands of
rank amateurs strung out on local drugs was almost beyond belief. I completed
my contract, taking a terrible toll on the tribal militia that had killed my
beloved. Collecting my own pay and a whopping life insurance settlement as
Beet’s beneficiary, I returned to the United States and tarried in the east
until it was clear Uncle Sam had no beef with me for my activities of the last
five years. Then I returned home.
Marcus Markey was an eight-year-old
neighbor kid when I left for boot camp at Grand Island Naval Training Station.
The boy had lived next door to us since the family returned to Victor upon the
death of his GI father in Kosovo. Markey, who had adopted me as his big
brother, struggled beside me with all the push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, dips,
flutter kicks, running, and swimming I did for a month to get ready for boot.
He even attempted the Ninjutsu and Israeli Krav Maga moves recommended by the
BUD/S—that would be the Basic Underwater
Demolition/SEAL training—website.
After each workout, he liked to run his hands over my sweaty biceps to test the
hard muscle; it bothered me in a vague way I didn’t understand back then. Markey
went to the bus station with my family to see me off, and I still recall his
thin arms locked around my waist in a goodbye hug, and the tears that soaked my
shirt.
Now, glancing at him as we strode down the
meadow, I could still see traces of that shy, adoring kid in this lanky
twenty-three-year-old. He’d retained the creamy complexion and black sloe-eyes
that gave him a slightly foreign cast. A once shaggy mop of black hair was cut
short in a vaguely military style. But if Markey ever joined up, he was in for
a bad time until he got tough enough to secure his own ground. It wasn’t just
that he was far beyond merely handsome; his long, curled lashes alone would
earn him grief in the barracks. Markey could have been a beautiful girl except
for the Adam’s apple. I wondered if he had ever cross-dressed. There wasn’t a
sign of a beard on his smooth skin, although I’m sure there was one; it merely
cleaned up well. There wasn’t much of the kid I knew fifteen years ago in this
fantastic youth—except for the shy, diffident demeanor.
“Kinda small,” he observed wryly as we
reached the fallen stag.
“It’ll make good venison. Well, let’s get
at it,” I suggested, noting the absence of any pride in the kill. “We’ve gotta
field dress him.”
“You mean cut him up?” The words were
almost strangled.
“You want to leave him for the coyotes?”
“N…no. Of course, not. But I don’t know
how.”
“We’ll gut him now and pack him back to
camp to dry out a little.”
“Uh…okay. Will he be all right
tonight? You know, he won’t go bad?”
“No. It’s cool enough. He’ll hold for a
couple of days.”
We hauled the buck away from the kill area
and strung him up in a tree. After a couple of false starts, Markey slit its
belly with a grimace of distaste. When that job was done, we hauled the carcass
back to camp where we hung it again, washed out the cavity, and left it to dry.
Then I grabbed a bar of soap, stripped, and waded into the lake. Ignoring the
shock of cold water, I lathered up while Markey stood on the shore staring at
me in disbelief. After all, it was November.
“If I’ve learned one thing in the last ten
years, it’s to keep clean,” I called. “Keeping clean is half of staying
healthy. Coming in?”
I watched as he undressed in the late
afternoon sun, revealing a long-limbed, clean-muscled physique with unblemished
skin and little body hair except for a pubic bush. Visually embarrassed, he
turned with his flank toward me, which merely silhouetted a long cock sprouting
from curly hair. He rushed into the water and gasped aloud at its frigid grip.
I continued lathering, well aware of black
eyes studying me closely. I rinsed and repeated process until my skin squeaked.
When I tossed him the soap, he seemed frozen in place. Then he floundered
frantically until he recovered the bar. As Markey scrubbed, I could tell my
inspection bothered him, so I swam out into the lake. Sufficiently warmed by my
exertions, I silently submerged and covered the distance to the shore
underwater. When I surfaced beside him, Markey was frantically calling my name.
“Right here,” I said quietly, startling
him.
“Damn, Daniel! I thought something happened to you. You were
under for a long time.”
“A fifty-yard underwater swim is mandatory
for SEALS.” I laughed. “You’d be surprised how many tadpoles had to have water
pumped out of their lungs after their first try.”
Markey’s teeth were chattering, so I
crawled out of the water, knowing he would follow. To spare him further
embarrassment, I kept my eyes averted as we dried off and dressed. I did the
cooking, a trade-off for him cleaning up the gear afterward. Later, as darkness
was wresting supremacy from light, we sat at a campfire and sucked on
long-necked bottles of beer.
“How was it?” he asked out of the blue.
“You know, the SEALS.”
“Great!
Best time of my life.”
“Why’d you get out?”
I swallowed the temptation to tell him the
truth. “Found out there was more money to be made outside the navy for doing
the same thing.”
“I heard you were a soldier of fortune,
but I didn’t believe it.”
“Why not?”
“You were so gung-ho.”
“You grow out of that pretty quick.”
He let a small silence grow as I sensed
some of the hero worship leaking away. Then, “How come you went for the SEALS?”
“After boot, I got caught up in the spirit
and put in for BUD/S training.”
“How was it?”
“Hell,” I said simply.
He grinned into the dying flames. “How
about Hell Week?”
“Hell on steroids. You thinking about
becoming a tadpole?”
That brought a quick frown and another
swig from the bottle. “Naw. Not cut out for it. Wouldn’t fit in,” he added
enigmatically.
*****
Well, we know who Markey
is now, don’t we? He’s the young man struggling. But Daniel has his own
battle, doesn’t he? Will he opt to help Markey or help himself?
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Don
