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Tuck Stop -*- Copyright 2000 by Ellen Hayes.

Any resemblance between the writings in this work, and any actual
persons or places, living or dead, are purely coincidental, except when
used for satirical purposes.

This work contains adult situations, adult language, adult concepts, and
possibly sex.  If you are legally not allowed to read materials
containing such things, then you will be breaking the law by reading
this.  I am not responsible.
Continuing to read this document, or storing it or reproducing it
in any format means that you explicitly affirm that you are legally
allowed to possess and read such materials in your city, county/parish,
state, and country.

All rights reserved.  See the bottom for distribution rights.


Tuck Stop


***
13:21 11 Jun

     I realized that, if I tried to put eyeliner on him, he'd flinch so
much that I'd never get it finished.  "So next we do eye shadow," I
announced, and thank God, the brat didn't argue.

***
13:27 11 Jun

     We'd finished without too much argument, and he asked me, "What do
I look like?"
     He looked like any other seven year old with makeup on; strange.
Kind of cute, I guess.  "Look for yourself," I said instead, and pointed
back at the mirror.  He did, peering at himself for a long time.  At
least with me doing it, it looked like makeup and not a fingerpainting
accident.
     He turned back and said, "But I don't look any older."
     "What?!" I finally let go when I couldn't imagine what he could
possibly be talking about.
     "Mom said makeup makes girls look older," he explained.
     "Not when they're seven," I shot back.
     "Oh."  He looked at himself again.  "My hair is too short."
     I sighed.  "You can always ask your mom if you can grow it longer,
but she might say no."  I certainly wasn't going to tell him anything
resembling permission.
     "Can I get a wig?"
     "Good grief, no.  They're expensive, like fifty dollars," I pointed
out, and he made a face.  "And I wouldn't even know where to get one
your size."
     "Do you know where to get one your size?" he asked.
     "No!"

***
13:40 11 Jun

     He'd FINALLY gotten bored with the whole thing, thank God, and I'd
cleaned him up as best I could, made him wash his face with soap and
water again, and then suggested swimming in the secret hope that that
would take care of anything else.  I THOUGHT I'd gotten everything off,
but Miz Parker had clairvoyant eyes, and I wanted to be sure.

***
17:15 11 Jun

     "And then you have to put it on AGAIN after you go swimming?" Ricky
complained.
     "Yep.  Told you it was stupid."  I was putting makeup on again
after we got done swimming; that's how I was sure it was stupid.
     "Then why do YOU do it?"
     I sighed.  "I don't know, Ricky, I really don't."

***
17:34 11 Jun

     I was more than happy to go home today.  Just what I didn't need
was anything else to rip my brain to shreds, and there it was.  And I'd
promised, so I couldn't even talk about it with anyone.

***
18:55 11 Jun

     Dinner was nice and quiet, relatively - at least I'd heard most of
the arguments before - until someone knocked at the door.  Everyone
stared at everyone else until Susan snorted and got up to answer it.
     I debated running for the basement as Amy pushed her chair back.
I didn't know what she was doing until she picked up a steak knife and
wiggled her eyebrows at me.  That was all well and good, but we were too
close to the back door-
     "Tucker?" Susan called.  "It's Jill and Kim?"
     I glanced at Amy before I got up slowly and went to meet my fate.

***
19:27 11 Jun

     "No way!  She HIT me, damnit!  You wouldn't put up with that shit
if some guy had done it to one of you," I raged, "so I'm not gonna put
up with it if she does it to me!  And did she apologize, or talk about
it, or anything?  NO!  She just bailed out, sticking me there..."  I
still had no idea how I'd gotten home.  With three cases of computer
stuff.

***
19:34 11 Jun

     "FINE!" Jill screamed, shocking me into silence.  "So," she said in
a normal voice.  "You're not going back together; that's fine," she
emphasized as I opened my mouth.  "Are you going to dump us too?"
     Pause.  I finally remembered to shut my mouth.
     "You mean, you still want to be my friends?"
     Both of them gave me a look that told me I was being immensely
stupid again.  "Tuck," Kim said patiently, "would we have come over
tonight to talk to you, if we didn't?"
     "I thought you were trying to get me back together with, with-"
     "Noooo," Jill intoned, shutting me up.  "IF," she emphasized that
word, "you wanted to try that, then we could talk about it.  Since you
don't, we won't.  But we have to find out if you still want to be
friends with us, which is why we came over."
     "We don't want to lose you, Tuck," Kim said.
     I thought about it for a long time.
     Finally, I said, "I don't want to lose you guys either."  And they
hugged me, at the same time.
     "Breakfast Sunday?" Kim asked.

***
19:44 11 Jun

     "Yeah, Mike, I'm fine.  I just talked to Kim and Jill for like an
hour..."  A reflexive look at the MacClock told me it hadn't been that
long.  "...or something.  About them.  They say they still want to be
friends with me?"
     "I guess they're serious," Mike commented eventually.

***
20:08 11 Jun

     "Dad, I just want to go upstairs and play on my synthesizer for a
while.  Please?"
     He sighed.  "Tucker..."  Then he shook his head.  "If there's
anything I can do for you, tell me, okay?  I remember having a broken
heart."
     "I know."  I also knew I didn't want to hear about it.

***
22:41 11 Jun

     Someone tapped me on my shoulder, and when I looked around, it was
Amy.  I pulled the headphones off, and she said gently, "Tucker, go to
bed.  It's almost eleven."
     I checked, and it was, or it would be when I got ready.

***
03:10 12 Jun

     Sleep was highly overrated, I'd decided.  Or at least REM sleep
was.  All I was having was nightmares, every sleep cycle I went through.
I really didn't need this on top of everything else.
     I eased myself out of bed and away from Amy, went to the bathroom,
and came back and set myself up in front of the synth again.  This was
exactly the reason I'd set everything up like this, after all; so I
could do this stuff at night without bugging everyone else.
     And the other bonus was, music would stop me from thinking.

***
06:10 12 Jun

     The alarm I'd told cron to run played into the headphones,
confusing me a bit until I figured it out.  I sighed, and started
shutting everything down.

***
07:17 12 Jun

     Coffee was evil.  Coffee was also potent.  I sipped at the mug as I
drove, and could feel myself coming up.

***
09:31 12 Jun

     I was immediately suspicious when Ricky offered to help clean up
breakfast, and even more so when he actually did.  I didn't mind the
help, so I didn't say anything, but I was on edge the whole time.
     So when he asked me if I could make him up again, I almost hugged
him, just for popping the suspense.

***
10:04 12 Jun

     "Wow, this is really weird," he said, going back to the mirror to
check himself out again.  I'd gone really light today, and it looked
a lot better on his face than I'd done yesterday.
     *Tell me about it,* I thought.  Aloud, I asked, "Ricky, why this
sudden interest in girls?  I thought guys your age hated girls and
everything they did."
     He turned around and gave me a look that Sabrina would have
applauded.  "The ones MY age, yeah; they're stupid."  I couldn't agree
with him more; aside from Amy, all of them had been at that age.  And
when Amy had wanted to go do girl stuff, she'd gone off with Susan
instead of inflicting it on me.  "But," Ricky continued, "you're cool,
and I love Mom and Aunt Cindy, and, and so, I dunno, I just wondered."
     That didn't sound like much of a reason, and I opened my mouth to
say so, when I realized that I didn't have a lot of reason either.  I
managed to shut my mouth before it dried out.

***
11:45 12 Jun

     "Valerie?"
     I came from wherever I'd been to see Ricky staring at me.  "Huh?"
     "Did you want to fix lunch?" he asked.
     I looked at him for a moment, then looked at my watch.  He was
right, it was time.

***
13:19 12 Jun

     It had taken until after lunch when everyone was finished and I was
cleaning up, to realize that Ricky was still in makeup.
     God, my head hurt.
     "Can we read comics some more?" he asked.

***
13:22 12 Jun

     Ricky wanted to sit on my lap, which was fine with me, I guess.  It
took some doing, since Stella wanted to stay in the sling as long as it
was around my neck.  I finally got everything arranged, and then dropped
back into thought.

***
14:06 12 Jun

     "No WAY!  You are taking that makeup off before you go swimming!" I
insisted.
     "WHY?" Ricky protested.
     "Because, if you hadn't noticed, you tend to swim until the last
minute, and I don't want to have to explain to your mother what you're
doing wearing it!  Do you?"
     Ricky pouted, but I didn't care.

***
15:56 12 Jun

     I still didn't know what was going on, somehow.  But I was sure
that something was wrong.  At least with me.  Stella seemed content
enough as I rocked her back and forth, and Ricky was practicing diving
in the pool.  Just like everything was normal.  So it had to be me.

***
18:14 12 Jun

     I looked at myself in Rachel's mirror, and tried to think.  The
makeup was all gone, and so it should have been simple to see what I
looked like.

***
18:51 12 Jun

     Brian said, "She's just a bitch, Tuck, just-"
     I didn't even realize I'd thrown a heavy serving platter at him
until he caught it.  It was right in front of his face; if he hadn't
caught it or ducked, he'd be seriously messed up right now.  Good catch
too, since it was still wet and soapy from the sink.
     We both stared at each other in shock.
     Finally, he breathed, "What the hell...?"
     "I don't know!"

***
23:19 12 Jun

     "Tuck!  You have to go to work tomorrow!" Amy insisted.
     "I know, I know," I complained.  I'd have to wait until she was
well asleep before I got up, too.  I sighed at the inevitable, and
started shutting everything down.

***
01:06 13 Jun

     I almost fell out of bed trying to get away, and when I realized it
had been a dream and I was safe, I tried to be quiet, but it was too
late; Amy had woken up too.  "Tuck?"
     "Just a nightmare.  Go back to sleep," I told her.

***
03:14 13 Jun

     I guess it was the aching cut on my wrist that made me dream of
being crucified on the flagpole at school, but that didn't make it hurt
any less.  At least Amy didn't wake up this time.
     I slid carefully out of bed and limped over to the main chair, and
started booting things.

***
06:43 13 Jun

     I thought it was peculiar that they wouldn't let me buy booze until
I was 21, but coffee was fine.  I could feel it doing things to my head;
obviously a psychoactive, but not even age-restricted.

***
07:41 13 Jun

     "TGIF," Miz Parker smiled at me.  "At least you can sleep in
tomorrow."
     "Yeah," I smilingly agreed as I shook off my umbrella.  She'd only
worry if I told her the truth.

***
09:13 13 Jun

     "Oh come on!  How can I look like a girl in shorts!" Ricky
complained.
     I squinted at him through the pounding of my head, and snarled,
"Your mom does it, and so do my sister and my cousin Amy.  It's not the
clothes!"
     "That's part of it!" he snapped back.

***
09:18 13 Jun

     "You promise?  Monday?"
     "I promise, Ricky!  Please, let me lie down..."  No wonder his mom
was eager to get back to work if this was the way he operated.

***
09:20 13 Jun

     Stella seemed happy enough to lie down on the couch with me.  I
couldn't blame her; that's why I was on the couch.  Thank Ghu I had more
comics to keep Ricky busy for a while.  And the rain was soothing; I'm
not sure why.

***
11:17 13 Jun

     Mister Parker pulled an axe from somewhere as Miz Parker held my
arm, and then he swung-
     I might have screamed as I woke up, because I sure scared the hell
out of Ricky and Stella.

***
11:28 13 Jun

     Ricky was amazingly good at massage for a seven-year old.  Of
course, he could walk on my back without breaking most of my ribs, which
helped.  Those little feet of his sure felt good as they dug into my
muscles.
     "Are you sure I'm not hurting you?" he asked.
     "Aaaaah'm suh," I drooled onto the pillow I was lying on.
"S'fine."

***
12:23 13 Jun

     "You HAVE to be hungry," Ricky stated.  "So eat something!"
     "Ricky, I don't HAVE to be hungry-"
     "You didn't eat breakfast."
     "I know that; I'm just not hungry."
     He looked at me for a couple of moments, then got out of his chair
and came around to mine.  "What?" I asked.
     He just hugged me.

***
12:51 13 Jun

     Crying hurt.  You had to wonder why people did it, if all it did
was make things worse.  Ricky hugging me made me feel better, but he was
doing that before I started crying.

***
13:38 13 Jun

     I watched the rain pound the pool for a while, and finally Ricky
and I looked at each other.  "I guess no swimming today, huh?" he said.
     "Don't think so."
     "Can I read some more comics?"

***
17:39 13 Jun

     Box plus plastic wrappers ought to protect everything.  Besides, I
was just plain tired.  It was hard to care.

***
19:07 13 Jun

     "So you wanna do something tonight?"
     "Oh, jeez, Tuck, Kim and I were going out tonight," Mike said.
"Look, come on and we can-"
     "No, that's cool, you two need some time together."
     "No, we can-"
     "That's FINE Mike!" I snapped.
     "Hey, don't get all constipated about it, Tuck-"
     I hung up on him.

***
19:22 13 Jun

     "Come on, Tuck," Susan cajoled.  "We can still make it in time to
get popcorn and stuff before the movie starts."
     "No.... I think I oughta just stay home tonight."  My mood was like
the rain; dark and falling.  "You two go."
     "Come on," Amy said, and I just got sick of it all of a sudden.
     "I said, NO," I repeated, trying to hold on to my temper.
     Susan started off in that tone of voice that said 'My little
brother is incapable of wiping his ass by himself', "Tuck, you need to-"
     "_I_ know what I need, better than you do, alright?"
     "Tuck," Amy started, "you-"
     "NO!"
     "Don't you-" Susan snapped, and reached out a hand to smack me on
the head.  I'd had enough of them both.  I grabbed Susan's incoming hand
and yanked, then managed to grab her arms in a full nelson as she
stumbled past.
     "Get," I grunted as I hoisted Susan off the floor, "OUT!"  I threw
her into Amy, causing both of them to tumble down, and slammed the door
shut and dropped the bar over the door before they could get up.
     Then I realized what I'd done.  They were the last two people on
earth who cared, and I'd just tried to hurt both of them.  "Oh, God,
WHY?!" I screamed at the ceiling, and fell to the floor.
     Slamming my head into the bedframe felt better than thinking, so I
did that and screamed and cried until I started to gag.

***
19:25 13 Jun

     "I've got to get out of here," I realized as the parental pounding
on my door started.
     But there wasn't anywhere to go.  Not to escape from myself.
     Yes, I suddenly realized, there was.

***
19:31 13 Jun

     I held the metal staff in the ready position.  "COME ON!  FIGHT ME,
YOU FUCKERS!" I screamed.  Then we started to dance, in the rain, with
the thunder pounding me and the lightning making everything surreal in
the flashes and darkness.

***
20:19 13 Jun

     I spun, scrabbling for traction, and thrust almost behind me where
I knew he'd be, and then whipped me around one way and the staff around
the other way at the same time, slamming the end into his head-
     "Eugene?!"
     I turned around, and it was Dad.
     I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.  Several times.
     "What, are you doing," he asked, like he couldn't believe what he
was seeing, "on the roof, during a lightning storm, with a six foot
metal pole?!"
     I laughed, scaring myself.  "Because, Dad.... it's a metal pole...
and it's a lightning storm."  The tears were coming back, though they
didn't affect my vision any worse than the rain had.  Or maybe I'd never
stopped crying.
     He walked closer, carefully, in the rain, across the slippery roof.
I wanted to warn him, but...
     When he got within reach of the staff, he stopped.  Calmly, he
asked me, "Dicing with death?" like he was asking me what time it was.
     That scared me so bad - the realization that my DAD, the dork of
them all, the idiot I had to outwit any time I wanted to do something
fun, knew what I was doing, without me even having to open my mouth - I
almost fell off the roof right then.  Pain lanced through my knees as I
hit, and I knew I was bleeding...
     I felt his hand on my shoulder, but before I could bring the staff
up, he was taking it away with his other hand.  "Kid," he growled, "get
your old man off the roof before the dice roll for him."

***
21:00 13 Jun

     He'd said, "If you want to talk, talk."  And that was the last
thing he'd said to me, as we started to walk in the rainstorm.
     I was so full of things I felt like I was going to explode, and I
couldn't stop moving.  Sometimes I was literally running rings around
him, and I kept jumping off fire hydrants and stuff, but nothing helped,
and I couldn't stop moving.
     I couldn't tell if Dad was scared, but I was.  But I couldn't stop,
and I couldn't touch him.

***
21:23 13 Jun

     I don't know what he told the cop.  He showed some ID, and the two
of them said some stuff I couldn't hear over the rain, and then the cop
rolled his window up and drove off slowly.
     Dad looked at me, right into the rain, and waved with his hand,
like 'Coming?'

***
22:09 13 Jun

     I'd slowed down, finally, physically, but I still couldn't stop and
I couldn't talk either.  Everything was still spinning around inside of
my head, too fast for me to do anything with it.
     We'd come to a park, which was deserted.  The lights were on, but
nobody wanted to be out here as the landscape slowly melted in the rain.
     I was spinning in place when a light whack on my shoulder stopped
everything for a moment.  I looked at Dad, and he might have been
smiling.  "Tag," he said.  "You're it."  And he put a pair of tanker's
goggles in my hand, like he was wearing suddenly.
     And then he ran off into the trees.

***
22:22 13 Jun

     He lunged and I swerved, but it was a feint and he grabbed my arm,
outstretched for balance, and used it like a handle to throw me into a
puddle in the grass.
     I got up, spitting mud out of my mouth, and he was standing there
in front of me, crouched down for balance.  He clapped his hands once,
an unmistakable challenge, and so I jumped him.

***
22:40 13 Jun

     I reached in and grabbed his belt and dropped, pulling him on top
of me as I tucked into a backwards roll, my feet ending up planted in
his abdomen as I landed on my back.
     "OhSH-" he cursed as he tried to roll off, but I still had his
belt, and I held on to him for the milliseconds necessary to give him a
good launch.  He actually flew in the air, I saw it, before he landed in
the muddy grass on his back.  I was over and up, grabbed some traction
with my toes, and slid on my belly before he expected it, and I almost
pinned him.
     He had a roll going, though, and he just wedged me over him and
continued the roll, and now I flew for a foot or two.  He almost got my
foot, too, but we were both too slick for any kind of wimpy grip, and I
squeaked out and then was scrabbling for distance as fast as I could,
through the mud.
     I heard him grunt and I knew he was getting an arm under him to
lever himself upright - it's a biped thing - and so I shoved into
reverse and got past him before he had his balance back, and then I got
a leg under me and used it to lift myself up, and then he was chasing me
as I ran like hell, laughing.

***
23:13 13 Jun

     Us using the runner's shower to wash off the mud, in the worst
rainstorm I'd ever been in in my life, seemed to be the dumbest thing in
the world right then, and I could not stop laughing.  He had to pull me
off the gravel path and hold me up as he rinsed me off too.

***
23:17 13 Jun

     Dad handed me a coke from the machine, and sat down on the ground
next to me.  It was still raining, but it was cleaner over on the
sidewalks.  I think I drank half of it almost instantly.  When I let the
can down, Dad was savoring his, goggles around his neck, T shirt
plastered to his wet dirty body.
     He'd beaten it out of me, whatever it was, and fair and square too.
Or as fair as we ever played.  I felt tired, and wet and slimy of
course, but the insanity inside me was gone.

***
01:30 14 Jun

     I had no idea how he had done it - evil instinct I guess - but he'd
not only found a convenience store, he'd found one that sold Guinness,
and bought a six pack, with me right there, and then we'd walked back
out into the rain, back to the park.
     We'd each had two, and I was looped, but fascinated.  He'd never
done this before.
     He finally stood up, poised like some kind of demented ballet
dancer, and I started to laugh.  He ignored me, and stood there for a
long time, and finally gave the bottle a shove into the air, and it
floated in a gentle arc until it shattered in the trash can.  I had to
applaud; it was beautiful.
     When he sat back down, he was grinning at me.  "This reminds me of
the good times in 'Nam," he commented, and clapped me on the shoulder.
     I almost fell over.  He never talked about his time in the service!

***
01:33 14 Jun

     "I'd been feeding the whole family, and the preacher, this line of
'God and Country' and all that bullshit," Dad explained, "and finally
got his signature on the enlistment papers-"
     "Whose signature?"
     Dad looked at me, and opened his mouth a few times, and finally
disgorged, "Male parent.  Anyway, off I went to Parris Island, as soon
as I could manage."  He shook his head.  "That was the last time I saw
any of them.  Bastards."
     Dad's hatred of the whacko culties that had attempted to brainwash
him - and incidentally, the entire class of paternal relatives,
technically speaking, though I'd never seen them - was well-known in the
family.  And, as far as I could tell, well-deserved.  Which was one
reason Mike and Dad got along so well; Dad tended to side against any
organized religion anywhere anytime.

***
01:36 14 Jun

     "I told the DI that I'd rather go in the stockade than go to Sunday
services, and that was it," he shrugged.
     "You went in the stockade?"
     He shook his head.  "I did about a thousand pushups, ran some
ungodly number of miles, and THEN got assigned to K.P. for a week.  But
I didn't have to go."  He chuckled.  "He kept yelling at me to 'wipe
that damned smirk off your face', but I couldn't help it.  I mean, it
was supposed to be punishment, but it was like I was free, free of that
damned church and all its evil for the first time in my life."
     We sat for a minute, then he laughed again.  "What?" I predictably
asked.  I wanted to know, too.
     "Later on," he chuckled, and leaned back on the grass, "I found the
chaplain, and found out he wasn't that bad a guy.  But I've never gone
to church since."

***
02:02 14 Jun

     "You VOLUNTEERED to go to Vietnam?"
     "I didn't just volunteer, kid, I fought for it.  I almost had a set
of orders forged up when they finally gave up and let me transfer."
     "You are crazy!"
     Dad shrugged.  "I've gotten smarter since then.  I think."
     "But, but... why?"
     He was silent for a long time, then he started shaking his head.
"I guess," he said slowly, "I had something to prove.  I guess to
myself, though it seems like I was trying to prove it to everyone I'd
known.  Even though I wasn't talking to them any more.  Which," he
turned to me, "is why it has to be me, that I was trying to prove it
to."  He tapped his head.
     I chewed on that for a while.
     "So," I finally said, "what were you trying to prove?"
     He sighed, and leaned back.  "Something about ethics, and
'manliness', and all that.  It wasn't that uncommon at the time,
relatively.  You had valid ethical arguments on both sides, and of
course both sides lied a lot, so it was very very hard to sort out what
the 'right' thing to do actually WAS.  It wasn't like they told us in
school; which I sort of suspected, but like a lot of things in the real
world, it was a shock to actually run into it 'in the wild.'"
     The rain fell as I thought, and Dad was silent.
     "Plus," Dad added, "there was that entire 'dicing with Death'
thing.  I figured if there was a God, and if it was like they had said,
then this would be the perfect opportunity to wipe me out of existence,
and punish me for disobedience.  And if it didn't happen, then they were
wrong, and I was right, and I'd live.  I never considered that I might
be wrong too, though."

***
02:23 14 Jun

     "That was how you met him?"  Him being my - all us Tuckerspawn's -
godfather, Arnold Lanier.
     Dad nodded.  "Big ol' black dude, almost no hair, muscles in his
FINGERS," he emphasized, "and he looks at me, and he said, 'Little puny,
but you'll do.'  Naturally, still being seventeen and immensely stupid,
I asked him who he was calling puny-"
     "No, Dad, you didn't-"
     "Oh-hohoho," he chortled, "yes I did, 'cause I'd just gotten
through Marine Corps boot camp and I had muscles I never knew existed,
and we had a discussion about it, which ended with him throwing me on
the roof of a hootch.  Strongest man I ever met," he commented.  "Not
what you'd call a book preacher."
     "What happened-"
     "I jumped off the roof and continued the debate," he said calmly.
"Then I met the rest of the squad."
     Long pause.  I was afraid to ask.
     "They dipped me," he eventually explained, "head first, in one of
the latrine barrels, while SERGEANT Lanier lectured me, in a nice
calming voice, on just what it meant to be a Marine, and why my attitude
was counterproductive to squad morale-"
     I was laughing so hard, if he said anything after that, I lost it.

***
02:27 14 Jun

     I'd finally gotten over the idea of Dad getting a lecture while
being plunged into a barrel of shit.  As much as I ever would.
     "And then he had them pull me out and set me on the ground, and he
screamed at me to 'REPORT PRIVATE TUCKER!' in the loudest voice I have
EVER heard in my life, I swear it made my bones rattle, and I had never
formally reported so fast or so well in my entire life either.  Still
dripping, you understand..."
     I guess I wasn't over it yet, because I laughed until I choked.

***
02:31 14 Jun

     "And that was the last he ever mentioned it."
     I was stunned.  "They NEVER mentioned it-"
     He laughed.  "Not officially, no, but any time they mentioned a
'shit-eating grin,' I got serious in a hurry..."
     My stomach hurt, but I couldn't stop laughing.
     When he could be heard over me again, Dad continued, "So once they
got done 'adjusting my attitude' and then cleaning me off again,
Sergeant Lanier gathered us all up and took us to the squad hootch, and
introduced me to the wonders of cheap beer."  He nudged my foot, waggled
his finger to show me this was an Official Pronouncement, and added,
"That's why I never drink cheap beer, Eugene.  It always tastes like
shit to me."
     I was gonna bust something, laughing this hard...

***
03:11 14 Jun

     "That was the longest five minutes I spent in my entire life,
standing on that can and wondering if it was a land mine, and if the
fuse might be slowly burning right that minute, or if it was waiting for
the pressure to go away before it exploded."  Dad took another swallow
of beer number three.  "Damn.  I can't remember if I pissed myself or
not, but I honestly thought I might die, just of the fear."
     "So how did you get out of it?"
     "Lanier started digging around my foot, with a bayonet, and
eventually rigged some sort of plate to slide under my foot that would
hold the trigger down.  It took about five thousand years..."
     "I bet."
     Dad nodded.  "And eventually he had to carry me off it, because I
was completely frozen.  I couldn't have moved if Ho Chi Min himself had
walked up to me."
     "So was it a real booby trap?"
     Dad shrugged.  "None of us wanted to try setting it off.  We waited
until we got extracted, and then called some artillery on the spot it
had been.  It was gone the next time we went out, anyway."
     "You went BACK?"
     "Had to, kid."

***
03:40 14 Jun

     "And I said, 'Who you callin' a nigger, honky motherfucker?'" and
Dad said it JUST like Uncle Lanier talked.  "And I hit him while he was
thinking about it, but," he tapped his head, "having gotten smarter,
instead of jumping on him, I dropped a CS grenade between his legs,
grabbed Sarge, and got us the hell out of the bar."

***
03:56 14 Jun

     "I thought silencers were illegal?"
     "In the States they were," Dad agreed.  "However, we were in a
foreign place, and moreover beating the hell out of it 'for its own
good'," which turned ironic as he said it, "so we busted a lot of
regulations and laws."
     "You don't have it now, do you?"
     "Of course not, that would be illegal."  As if I wasn't sure
enough, he added, "And that's what you tell anyone who asks."
     "Right.  So what did you do with it?  At the time, I mean."
     He gave me a look.  "I have a .22 in my hand, the VC are sneaking
through our perimeter, what do you think I did?"
     "Woke up back in the hootch after drinking cheap beer?" I said,
just to be irritating.
     "I wish," he said like he meant it.  "Nope, capped the one inside
our group in the head, he collapsed without a sound before he could slit
Lanier's throat, and then I grabbed the clickers and set the claymores
off, which woke everyone up."
     "High explosives have a tendency to do that," I agreed.
     "And, being brave Marines with a long historical tradition, we made
a tactical maneuver-"
     "Ran like hell," I suggested.
     "No, that was what the Army did," Dad argued.  "We maneuvered in
rapid tactical fashion to a regrouping area-"
     "Ran like hell," I insisted.
     "Shut up, Tucker," he said lazily.

***
04:31 14 Jun

     I was woozed enough that I didn't mind Dad having the last beer.
It still hadn't stopped raining, and we hadn't stopped talking.  "I
remember everyone reaching out, dragging me and Lanier into the dustoff
chopper, and then I was gone.  I woke up back in Japan, after they'd
operated on my lung, pulled all the fragments out."
     "Shit," I commented.
     "Yeah, fifteen days short of my full tour, too, damnit."  He
shrugged.  "At least they knew I wasn't goofin' off, like a lot of guys
did in their last thirty days."

***
04:56 14 Jun

     "I still don't know, for sure, why your mom was even interested in
me.  I was having too much fun in the labs programming.  But she kept
talking to me when I came up for air or food or whatever, and eventually
I got the hint, and we started dating..."
     "And you lived happily ever after?" I supplied.
     He laughed.  "What are you, stupid, kid?"  He shook his head and
lay back on the grass, shading his eyes from the rain.  "There were
times I thought we were going to kill each other.  And more than once
that I slept outside in my car, afraid she'd nail me with something as I
slept."  He chuckled again.  "I should add, to be fair, that your mom
thought the same way about me a few times."
     "Dad," I said, suddenly suspicious, "if this is about Debbie-"
     "No.  Not really," he claimed.  "I had other girls I dated before I
found the labs and your mother found me, and two of them didn't go too
well either.  One of 'em I had to call the cops on, she was getting that
crazy.  So who the hell knows what'll work out and what won't?"  He
rolled over and clapped a hand on my shoulder.  "Just, don't let her
drive you crazy, you know.  You need your wits about you, to survive.
You know."
     He leaned back and shook his head, sort of staring at the rain as
it fell.  "Women, men, they're all crazy sometimes.  Don't let them make
you any crazier than you have to be."

***
05:44 14 Jun

     "You wanna go back before the sun comes up?" Dad asked.
     I looked at the sky, and looked inside me, and finally nodded.
"Yeah."
     He helped me up, and we started to walk.  Home.

***
06:39 14 Jun

     I was so tired and sore, I almost suggested going to sleep under a
bush for a few hours, but Dad just kept walking along like he did this
every day.  I knew he ran, but...  Damn.  I was sort of in awe of him at
that point, and the last thing I was gonna do was quit before he did.
     We finally rounded the last corner, and I saw Mike's car sitting in
the driveway.
     We walked down the sidewalk and up to the house before my feet fell
off, and I knocked on the window of the car.
     Mike's head popped up from under the blanket in the back seat, and
he looked at me and Dad.  I gave him one thumb up, and he grinned before
he gave it back.

***
06:42 14 Jun

     "And that's it?  You just tell me not to worry about it?" Mom
yelled at Dad.
     "Sarah, it's handled, he's safe-"
     "And how was I supposed to know that?!"
     "Perhaps you could trust me?" Dad pointed out, his temper starting
to burn too, judging by the tone of his voice.
     Mike tugged on my elbow, and we both departed as quietly as we
could manage.  Dad caught my eye for an instant, as I turned around the
stairpost, and gave me a slight nod, and a brush-off that told me to
leave while I had the chance.

***
09:38 14 Jun

     Mike and Dad almost had to carry me downstairs, but I woke up
enough to walk, and finally made it out to the car.  Mike and Dad talked
a bit as I stuffed myself in the front seat, and then I went to sleep
again.

***
09:55 14 Jun

     I let out a huge belch before I could throw the empty Dew away, and
Mike applauded lightly.  "I'd suggest you have another one, 'cause you
still look like hell, but I'd be afraid you'd explode."
     I belched again, and said, "Me too."
     "Maybe, you should snort one, get all the caffeine through your
nasal mucous membranes."
     "I'd drown, Mike," I pointed out.  Even semi-conscious, I knew that
was a bad idea.

***
10:22 14 Jun

     "So, you felt betrayed?" Sheila asked.
     I swear, it was like the woman had never been out of the office
before.  "Duh!  I mean, she fucking- excuse me.  But, she hit me, and
she threw me out of the hotel room, and when I got back up to try
talking to her, I was going to talk to her and apologize and all that,
and she'd just bailed out!  I didn't know if my stuff was there, or my
money, or even my clothes or anything, and she just took off!"
     I didn't want to mention the clothes thing, or the possible
blackmail aspects, because that would go into a lot more detail than I
wanted to talk about.
     But if Debbie had wanted to set me up to get killed, about four
photos to the right people would do it.  And she'd had a head start on
me.  I might have found a reception committee waiting for me at the
airport or something.  Or a bunch of LA cops coming to meet the sexual
pervert who had assaulted her, or God only knew what.
     And the little note that had said, 'youll get your money but YOULL
PAY' hadn't made me feel the least bit better.  In fact, that's the last
thing I remembered before waking up in my room bleeding.

***
10:39 14 Jun

     "So what happened after that?"
     "I don't know," I answered honestly.  "I woke up in my room, Sunday
afternoon sometime."
     "Is that when you got that?"
     "Huh?"
     Sheila pointed at my right wrist.  "Your mom said it was really
deep..."
     "Oh, yeah," I admitted.  "Mike said I was really deep under."
     "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that," she said before I could
continue.
     "I tranced out, I guess," I explained to her.  "And Mike knows how
to bring me back.  To the real world.  Sometimes a slap works, or
yelling at me.  Sometimes it takes blood."
     We looked at each other for a while.
     After a minute, she said, "You're telling me he cut you?"  I
nodded.  "Didn't it hurt?"
     "When I woke up, yeah."
     "Why, why did he choose that method?"
     I shrugged.  "'Cause it worked?"  She didn't like that answer.

***
10:56 14 Jun

     "Don't I have to go now?" I asked, puzzled.
     "No," she said like she knew I wasn't going to like it.  "Your
mother called and said you'd probably need a double session today, and
I think you do too."
     I didn't like it.

***
11:06 14 Jun

     "Are you afraid that breaking up with her, somehow makes you less
'manly'?" Sheila asked.
     I laughed at that.  And laughed, and laughed.
     It was a bitter, nasty laugh, but it was still too much to
suppress.

***
11:19 14 Jun

     "Well, what other resources do you have?"
     "Huh?"
     Sheila smiled at me.  "You've indicated you have other friends,
that haven't abandoned you like you were afraid they would.  Have you
talked to them?"
     "Well, some, yeah," I admitted.
     "So...  Do you really like them?"
     "My friends?  Of course!"  Sheila could be so out of it sometimes,
I wondered if she had to have someone to take care of her in the real
world.  "They wouldn't be my friends if I didn't like them, would they?"
     "Well, some people have acquaintances they call friends, but don't
really like them.  Hanging around with the 'cool' crowd just because
they let you, would be one example."
     "The cool kids would rather see me dead then let me hang with
them."
     "Why do you say that?"
     I wished I could buy a case of clues for her.

***
11:48 14 Jun

     "And don't forget to keep in touch with your friends," Sheila told
me.  "If they're really friends, then they want to help, and I really
think you need to spend time with them, in the real world, instead of
diving into yourself like you told me you do."
     "I will," I said, half to get her to shut up.

***
12:02 14 Jun

     "Brain all shrunk now?" Mike asked as we made our way down the
stairs.
     I held up my fingers in a small circle to indicate how big my brain
was at that moment.
     "Oooh, one of those learning experience sessions?"  I nodded.
"Those suck."
     "How do you know?" I asked him.
     "Kim's told me a little about hers, and she said the best ones were
the ones that made her walk around like a zombie for a few days."
     "Then I'd have to say, this was the best session I've had yet."  If
it wasn't for Mike, I might have gotten lost on the way to the parking
lot, or gone to sleep in the stairwell someplace.

***
12:27 14 Jun

     "Call me about eight, mano," I told Mike, and he nodded.
     "Now get to bed," Dad insisted.
     "What about Mike?"
     "I'll call his dad and square things with him," Dad assured us, and
Mike relaxed.  I almost did too, and therefore almost fell out of Mom's
embrace.  Amy grabbed my arm, Mom let go, and Amy pulled me to the
stairs.  "G'night!" Dad, Mom and Mike called at the same time.
     "'Night," I called back.  "Amy," I said as she pulled me upstairs,
"I'm really sorry about last night, I just, I just..."
     We got past the last step and she pulled me along before I could
figure out what I was just.  "It's okay.  Just don't you ever do that
again," she warned me.
     "I won't," I promised her, looking in her eyes.
     She pulled me into a hug and kissed my cheek before she started
pulling me to where I wanted to go.

***
20:04 14 Jun

     The white strobes had looked like minigun fire to me, but I'd known
it was my dad in the gunner's seat on the Huey, so I wasn't worried any
more about Debbie chasing me, no matter how many of the football team
she had out hunting me.  Partially because Mike was out there hunting
them; every so often, one would go down or start screaming, and I knew
it was him, even though I couldn't see him.  The worry had been if he
could kill enough of them before they got me, but Dad was taking care of
that...
     Then I remembered that was the phone, and scrabbled around until I
found the wimp phone.  "Uh?"
     "Tuck?" Mike said.
     "Uhhhhhh," I complained.
     "Quit whining, get your ass up."
     "Nuuuuhhhhfuckyuh, hkay," I managed, and hung up.
     If I hadn't pulled myself off the bed by crawling onto the floor,
that would have been where they'd have found me next week.  I hurt.  A
lot.  But I made it onto the floor, and crawled over to the door, and
managed to get myself upright so I could open it, and then to the
bathroom for a shower and so on and out again, to find Mike standing in
the hallway.
     But he was holding a Jolt, which I have no idea where he got it.

***
20:19 14 Jun

     I wished he had another Jolt, but I had to make do with a coke
instead.  "So what am I doing?" I asked.
     "You need to go out," Amy insisted.
     "I need to sleep, is what I need," I said.
     Everyone, Susan Amy Mike and Kim, all shook their heads at the same
time, which made me kind of motion sick.

***
20:37 14 Jun

     I got stuck between Mike and Amy in the back seat of Kim's car,
because Susan and Kim were going to talk to each other.  We, us in the
back seat, already knew Susan far too well.

***
21:04 14 Jun

     "Why am I out here?" I asked.  Stuffed between my sister and my
cousin, I didn't add.
     "Because," Mike said before anyone else could start, "first off,
you need to eat."  I did, and I was doing exactly that, flinging noodles
into my mouth as fast as I could.
     "And you need to remember how to go out without HER," Amy said from
my right.
     "What am I doing," Susan asked rhetorically, "babysitting you
br-OW!"
     "Because you love me," Mike leered before his face flicked to the
neutral mask that meant he was in pain.  There was a lot of violent foot
action going on under the table, and so I pulled my legs up and wriggled
and pushed and ended up sitting in sazen in the booth.  Then I got back
to eating.  Hungry wasn't the word.

***


"It was late in the evening,
and the music seeping through..."


Distribution:
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Archiving is permitted provided no fee is charged for access.

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+ ==[--------   Ellen Hayes   @>--,--'---      ellen@barkingduck.net +
PGP DH/DSS keyfing: 33D4 156A AE39 53E2 0313  6714 2878 56A8 61B0 9CDC
+ http://www.barkingduck.net/ehayes -=[1990]=- vicki .sig virus 11.4 +



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