“POET OF PHU BAI”  - FILE III  (CONCLUSION)
              
              
              They were now five feet apart.
              
              “My dad calls it the octopus of socialism,” Carlos said.
              “With one arm missing,” Ben agreed, “and that’s where we fit in; our own personal miracle to go along with all the cultural and social miracles since 1775: winning the Revolution, itself, the Louisiana Purchase, the policy of Manifest Destiny which turned a glob on the map into a fully-realized powerhouse, and somehow surviving Roosevelt, which took about eight consecutive miracles in the Pacific, alone.”
              “God’s work?” the boy asked.
              “No way,” Ben said, “unless you also wish to credit Him with guiding the dice for the occasional winning streak in Las Vegas or the rapist who sequesters himself with a particularly comely victim.  It’s luck, pure and simple, and has an annoying habit of rolling out as fast as it sometimes rolls in.  In the end, it’s democracy, which is not only letting the children run the family because they outnumber the parents, but allows them to change the parents as they see fit.  We happened to have ended up on top of a gold mine covered with timber and cattle, including many rivers on which to float all three, so there’s not much to brag about in the survival of the doctrine.  On the balance, and so far winning, we have brilliant engineers and inventors and the entrepreneurs to go with them, thus everything and because of politics and religion, nothing.
              “Our objective in Clover is not to just play with your young bodies and splash you with our hot seed, but to see that no one plays with your minds as you mature.  Thus the whole fandango in the woods; understanding charisma, if that’s the right word, in order to resist it and think freely.  Respect traditions and codes that make sense, go with the flow when you probably should resist, conform, and feel lucky as hell you have one outstanding outlet in which you can break every law in the book.  We think of it as human.”
              
              “I hear you’ve broken every law in the book,” the boy, now three feet from the approaching adult whispered.
              “I did a wee bit of killing in my time,” the priest responded, “of he that needed of it.”
              “’Death has a Happy Ending,’” Carlos said as if reciting the title of a book he might one day write, and being familiar with the underlying story, particularly the locally favorite passage which had the first hundred citizens selected for jury duty stating categorically they would vote for acquittal.  Jury nullification practically on the courthouse steps.  Case dismissed at the prosecutor’s unofficially cheerful request.
              “It did one time,” the adult agreed, “but nevertheless I find myself loath to search out a second like Manfred Ailing – the cross I bear.  There are others like him, finagling in some cases, brutalizing in others, but in all, leaving behind kids who have to spend their first two or three trips to the altar dazed and frightened, which is not at all what the place is about.”
              “That sounds like one of the miracles you were talking about,” Carlos said.
              “It’s not, at all,” Ben responded, “the opposite is true, it’s a disaster if the kids who’ve been truly, rather than legally raped, aren’t given an open door on perspective and allowed to linger at it until they understand that what happened to them isn’t some weird manifestation of indefinable malice, but a physical act that lots of kids love.”
              “It must be totally amazing when they go home okay,” the boy said.
              
              “If there were no other purpose to Clover,” the man said, “that would justify our activities because we’ve succeeded with over a hundred victims in the last ten years, and the only girl we couldn’t reach had been mauled by the man I caught up with and throttled to death in the parking lot of the A&P.”
              “And you have sperm, too,” the boy whispered hoarsely as they began feeling each other’s radiating body heat.
              “I was just thinking the same about you,” Ben said, “so alert and likely without the infinitely tiresome need to be fresh, and dead cute, and literate, and you’ll probably cum all over me just like Francis did.”
              “I really want to,” the boy responded.
              “Let it happen with me, first,” the adult advised, “because there probably will be some letdown after you ejaculate, and I don’t want to be spilling all over you unless you totally want it.”
              “But you have to let it happen with me first, sometimes, too,” Carlos said, “so you can watch while you’re excited.”
              “When you’re experienced,” the priest responded, “I’d love to do it that way once in awhile, but remember our unofficial motto is Please the Child.”
              “It should be: ‘please, all the children,’” the razor-witted Carlos quotth.
              “Speaking of which,” the man whispered as they closed the last few inches between their sweating, panting bodies, “I take Ricky and Pete and the others down to the hospital.  We work with cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy kids, some with other disorders, in the pool and take them in the sauna and steam rooms.”
              
              “Do they like it?” the boy whispered.
              “As much as any kids,” the priest replied, “probably more than…  It’s pretty much the thing in their lives, except a few that respond to reading.  Hitler was right in killing a lot of them, their lives are about the equivalent of a fresh burn, but some are okay, and, I suppose in some kind of compensation, highly avid about being touched, and especially touching each other with a little help from their friends.”
              “Are their girls?” the panting boy asked.
              “Yes,” the older male whispered, “Aileen and Brenda are eight, and there a dozen more, and about eighteen boys at a therapy session.”
              “Do Kitty and Janet go?”
              “Yes,” Ben whispered, “always.  Tuesday and Friday night from seven to ten.”
              “That’s fantastic,” the boy said.
              “Everyone’s ready for bed by eleven,” the teacher acknowledged.
              
              “No mysterious-ways about that, I imagine,” Carlos observed.
              “We get all oily with baby oil,” Ben responded, “and use amyl nitrate, which is like dynamite in a bottle, which it half-way is, so you don’t want to imagine too much about how it feels in the warm steam to have your penis inside little Aileen while you help Gordon, who’s sixteen, be successful with Brenda.”
              “Could you be, you know, inside me while that was happening?” the boy wanted to know.
              “We’ll have to talk a lot about that,” Ben said.  “Like the Greeks, we pretty much stay away from penetrating each other that way, partly to do with clinical reasons having to do with muscle tone in certain, shall we say, critical areas of the juvenile physique, or adult physique, for that matter, and partly because it isn’t necessary.”
              “But you do make exceptions?” Carlos said.
              “Dale’s being taken that way,” Ben answered, “by a friend of his father’s.  They just have those feelings for each other.”
              “I know all about that,” the boy assured his older partner.
              “Well,” Ben said, “it’s mutual.  Francis and I never tried mounting each other, and I’ve never tried it with anyone, but lying on my back and watching your face while it’s beginning is not the least sensual fantasy I’ve ever had.”
              
              “And the therapy rooms would be a good place, because they’re already using baby oil, right?” Carlos asked.
              “Yes,” his handsome partner said, “plus there are several teenagers somewhat less developed than I am, so, since it’s going to happen anyway, they could get you wet before you lie on your back for me.”
              “But that would just be the first time, right?” the boy quizzed, “because I want you behind me while I’m with Aileen and Brenda.”
              “You’ll have to kind of get used to having me for a slave,” Ben said, “acting on your every wish and whim.  Come to think of it, I’ll have to get used to it, too, having never been in love before.”
              “Well, Killer Slave,” Carlos said, “I was having thoughts along the line of a cummand performance.”
              “It would seem to me,” intoned the adult, “the answer to that is plainly  a cum hand “
              “Cum, man, you can do better than that,” the boy responded.
              “Oh, cum on, master,” the man said, “a slave is but a draggly thing for use and disposal.”
              “Not until he’s failed every test,” the boy said, “and I don’t see how you’re going to even fail the first one.”
              By this time the two were each using their partner’s tense whispers to judge their height in relationship to each other.  Both held their display postures in the pitch black, both instinctively spread their long, muscular legs as they experimented with positioning themselves, and each kept up his whispering to both guide and excite his partner.  The game continued, as intense in the last few inches as it had been in the previous ten feet.
              “While you were on the towel in front of Francis,” Carlos said, quietly as a mouse, “and, you know, you were both pretending that Kip was naked with you, did everything happen, or was it later?”
              “It happened there in the shower,” Ben replied in a like voice, “but about ten minutes later.”
              “After he had you completely naked?” Carlos wanted to know.
              “Yes,” Ben said, “and my legs spread apart so he could experiment while kneeling on the towel.”
              “Was he leaning back against the wall like I am?” Carlos said.
              “Yes,” the young athlete replied.”
              “And you could see, right?”
              “Yes,” Ben said, “there was soft light in the shower.”
              “It must have been really exciting to see,” the boy then said.
              
              “I though so,” the priest admitted, “but you seem to redefine excitement every half a minute or so.”
              “That’s because I’m so curious about what a man looks like, and you’re a man,” the boy allowed, “and even more curious about what sperm looks like, and you’re going to teach me, and I want you inside me the first evening we spend with the kids at the hospital.”
              “I knew there had to be some practical reasons,” Ben responded.
              “Well,” the boy observed in reply, “they seem to be getting in the way; all the practical stuff like what cum looks like, and how much there is, and whether I want to hold you against my face while it’s happening, they all get in the way of just plain loving you in the sense of wanting to be close to you as much as possible and thinking about you a lot.”
              “Well,” mused the instructor, “disciplined mischief is what Clover’s all about, ninety-five points former, to five points latter, so once we get it out of the way and have it in perspective, there should be no further obstacles to our falling head over heels for each other, spending lots of time together, and getting on with the chapter in our lives that brings us together.”
              “So we’re kind of like twins,” the boy murmured, a little dizzy from the awakening – here was someone who felt exactly like himself, so much so that mightn’t they become bored with each other? – from his panting nearness, from the way they were using their panting, a little like bats use their screeches, to position themselves as close to perfectly as they could.
              
              “Are you straight out from under your belly?” Carlos whispered.
              “My penis curves to the left,” came the husky reply, “I guess about and inch or two off center.”  Never thought he’d say anything like that in his whole life, he didn’t.  “How about you, is your boner straight out from between your legs.”
              “Yes,” the boy whispered.
              “Okay, next question,” the man panted, “is it hard against your stomach, or probing toward me?”
              “Against my stomach, ” the child whispered, “is your penis the same?”
              “Mine’s straight out,” the adult said.
              “Then we must be really close,” Carlos rasped.
              “Probably within an inch or two,” the man agreed; “were you circumcised?”
              “Yes,” the boy whispered, “how about you?”
              “Same here,” Ben replied.  “I never thought it made much difference before, but if we are successful together, I think the feeling of you naked against me will be more exciting that if it was just our foreskins.”
              “Do you think we’ll be successful?” the eleven year old wanted to know.
              “We’ll have a better chance,” Ben whispered, “if you’re penis sticks out more, if you don’t have quite such a hard boner.”
              “I think you’d have to use a knife or a saw to change it, especially so close to you,” Carlos panted.
              “It would be better if we could do it verbally,” the older male responded, “talk of something, you know, different than how you’ll look crucified in firelight with the semen of several dozen young adult males slicking you from your face almost to your knees.”
              “Different would be good,” the panting child rasped.
              “How ‘bout two men kissing,” the young priest suggested.
              “That’s better,” the boy murmured softly, “and what if they had beards?”
              “Yes,” Ben enthused, “fussy, primpy ones.”
              “And they really go at it,” Carlos added, “not like we did when I was in the girl’s clothes, but really making out, all hairy against each other.”
              
              “Are you there?” the adult quizzed.
              “Yes,” the boy responded.  “Are you still, or did you go down.”
              “I did,” the man admitted, “but then I thought how you’d look in the firelight with just your first partner’s sperm on your chest, and I’m back to normal.”
              “So it’s about to happen?” the boy asked.
              “Just move to me a little,” his lover whispered back in guidance.
              
              “Hi,” they whispered in unison a few seconds later.
              
              Both still in full display, both in total darkness, their first touch; missing a perfect mating of their swollen erections by less than half an inch, they surged tenderly against each other until the adult’s tip was firmly against the juvenile’s.  Both wet, hot, and slippery they had a hard time thrusting fully against each other, but slipping off was all part of the learning experience, and helped Carlos from becoming so excited his boner would once again be hard against his smooth, preteen belly.
              “I guess what we really want is to go inside each other.”
              
              Yes, I’m rough on god throughout, but not prejudiced enough to blame the slacker for not designing the male body so, somehow, a child’s boner can enter a man’s erection, even if the reverse is conceded as being clinically unlikely.  No, the beloved deity of cranks and morons is not to be blamed for this oversight.  There, that’s as fair as I can be.
              
              But they tried, again and again easing together, shifting their relative positions ever so slightly, and experimenting with how close they could come to the ultimate act before the laws of physics and chemistry (they were both very hot, wet, and slippery) denied them utopia and they had to try, try again, all the while in the dark, all the while with their fingers linked behind their necks, their young, bare chests arching within inches of each other as they probed, failed, and tried again.
              
              “What if we could see?” Carlos whispered after ten minutes of their affectionate, homosexual welcoming of their partner.
              “Tall order for a slave,” Ben remarked.
              “But it is ye who defends us from god,” the boy observed, “so the request should be taken practically, not divinely.”
              “Let there be right in what you say,” the priest prayed, and flicked the lighter in his right hand.  It blazed behind his head for a moment, but he had the presence of mind to know that once they began looking at each other, he’d burn his fingers, or worse, the overheated device would pop in an angry fireball.  Discipline.  He lowered his right hand to the candle at his side, and dropped the lighter safely to the carpeted floor before he trained his gaze on the naked child displaying beautifully before him, his oversized five inch penis still probing his own huge, hard erection.  It was like looking at a tennis match displayed on a television at a party where a playful host turned the set on its side.  Up and down instead of side to side, north and south, instead of east and west, as both young males tried to simultaneously look into the beautiful eyes of his companion while looking at the harshly swollen display of his lover.  For long moment’s they stare down as, hands still behind their heads, the two athletes probed and pushed just the wet, swollen, almost purple glans against each other – that was the serve.  Then they’d slip, one over or under the other, sometimes side to side, and the volley would begin, the heads of the athletes bobbing as they each fought for the greater beauty; his glowing yet glazed eyes, the immense stress clearly displayed in their flaring, purple heads.
              
              “Stop, slave,” Carlos whispered, an amazing command since both males had just begun to tense in what both knew was their final wave.
              “What, master,” came the mock plaintive response.  “This had better be good,” Ben thought to himself, and, remembering through the haze whom he was with, he chided himself for his lack of faith.  It was Carlos.  It wouldn’t be good, it would be spectacular.
              “I think I figured something out,” the boy said.
              “Yes, master,” the priest deadpanned.
              
              It’s been ages since we shared the joy and pain of a reader quiz.  Yes, my joy, your pain, but if you’ve read this far you’re a glutton for the stuff, and a little more can’t hurt.  These quizzes apply especially to fledgling writers, and indeed are designed to discourage them.  Aye, it is a thankless profession, far more rewarding of salesmanship than dedication to craft and art, so be ye wary.  And how good do you have to be, even to be ignored and overlooked?  Well, good enough you should be able to answer this quiz having to do with the creative side of the craft.  What has Carlos figured out?  Why, in as crucial a moment as the story has yet yielded, is he interrupting orgasms less than half a minute away, hands behind heads, notwithstanding, with the answer to a  riddle?  Yes, I have a hint for you, but first consider how important that answer must be.  That’s our friend perspective, and he should provide something of a hint in his own right.  Very important.  Okay, here’s the next line from Carlos: “I want to look in your eyes while I’m getting wet from your sperm.”  Well, that’s a desire of lovers since probably ten thousand years before the desire for cooked food, still, it’s right up there in the hint department.  Veteran readers will know I don’t use these hints to tease, they’re genuine challenges, especially, as I said, for those who think they’d like to try their hands at the keyboard on a professional level.  In other words, you should be able, given sufficient time, to figure out what it is that Carlos wants, how his objective can be fulfilled: looking – hint, hint, hint, - into Ben’s eyes, while also watching the young adult lose control and the flaring purple tip of his shaft-hard seven inch erection as the powerful swimmer gushes his first heavy flood of sperm over his rod hard penis, so tender and boyish against the more masculine and potent erection.  As I said, I’m known not to prevaricate and temporize in a teasing fashion, while giving the reader a fair amount of time, albeit time not entirely free of distractions, to figure out the answer to the legitimate puzzle.  What did Carlos want?
              
              
               “And, “ the coltish youth continued, kneeling, legs spread moderately against the widely spread legs of the tall athlete, “you know, if we put a mirror on the floor, between us, we could look down and I could still see your eyes.”
              
              Yep, that’s what it’s like in the majors.  No kudos, no cash, but a permanent satisfaction that you’ve made it all the way; that no one else can do what you do.  And, lo, your opportunities are greater than mine.  I’m stuck with this king thing, with the necessity of mincing the fewest possible words when it comes to pointing out your fatal flaws.  It’s my duty.  Entertaining you as an artist, that’s not half-bad fun, but I don’t get off as other artists do: you know, all politically correct, moaning over the grinding misery of Jewry while never acknowledging they deserve every tear, and to be scoured forever from the face of the earth as penance for the tears they’ve brought so many for so long.  It’s my duty to say this, because it is the truth.  In parallel, it’s my duty to call you fat, and point out that this anomaly, of and by itself, excludes the remotest possibility of a jolly future for anybody.  Your colossal houses, vehicles, and debt loads.  True, true, and true.  Dithering over the implacable enemy of Allah’s hoards instead of killing them in their seething and utterly insane millions.  That’s true enough.  But all is not lost.  I’ve been mercifully out of the Land o’ Pigs (sorry for the porcine insult) for nearly a decade, but I remember at a time in the past – and I don’t know if it’s still true – you could walk into a Burger King and damned well have it your way.  You might try them.  Meantime, no, this is not a gratuitous rant because a certain slave is unscrewing the mirror on his bathroom medicine chest, and, though it’s likely many an interesting thing went on in this or that old house, the carpentry involved is hardly at a level to hold our interest.  In other words, we’re concluding a probably cheesy plot alteration to bypass a few minutes of routine action, and, you guessed it, not leave you empty handed during the mechanical interval.  Did I say “concluding”?
              
              It worked beautifully.  They revised their posture so instead of probing each other, back arched, fingers laced behind their necks, they now huddled, foreheads on each other’s shoulders, hands at each other’s slim waist, and staring down as they resumed their delicate, meticulous thrusting against each other.  Ben, freshly shaved, looked as much a boy as the eleven year old, just bigger.  They took occasional breaks from staring down to breath raggedly into each other’s ear, then returned their eyes to the mirrored image of what they were doing to each other.  The width of the delicate glass panel on the carpet kept them a little over a foot apart, but braced against each other they overcame the obstacle and found the challenge actually enhanced the raw carnality as their hard, flaring penises continued rubbing and bumping minute after sensual minute.
              
              “If it pleases master,” Ben whispered in a tense whisper, “to wish any other enhancements to our fellowship, might he be so could to ask at the present instant.”
              “If Kitty was here,” the boy replied, “I might think it was a good idea to get her to lie under us and we could look down into her eyes, instead of each other’s.”
              “Oh, master,” the adult whispered, “I’m cumming.”  Neither had touched the other intimately, but it was still true.  It didn’t happen right away but Carlos could sense the rapid rise of tension  in his panting companion, his cording muscles, his face slack now in the candlelight reflected in the looking glass, and his final groan was unmistakable.  At first it was indistinct.  Pearly drops appeared as if by magic all over the preteen’s naked chest and belly, the mirror was spattered for several moments.  Carlos would have been satisfied – totally- with those few errant drops of hot, white-streaked fluid, and was just about to whisper, “Wow,”, when the athlete began to ejaculate.  Shuddering and gasping, he held fast against the juvenile, rapidly pulsing hard fluid gushes over the child’s beautiful pink boner.  No spattering half-spray, but what appeared to the enthralled and intoxicated boy to be the full gusher of a male giving a female her child or of a man diligently about the pleasurable business of luring practically the breath, itself, and sublimely trapping another dedicated and devoted – but mostly just plain lucky – future pedophile.
              
              The willing slave’s heavy flow began to subside, but the thick, stringy slick thickly coating the youth’s lower belly, penis, and thighs had amply stimulated Carlos, and his thin, milky preteen sperm splattered with surprising near ferocity over the panting young adult, almost equally soaking his taut swimmer’s belly and boy-like upper thighs.   
              
              It took them half an hour to recover, and by the time they had half cleaned the mirror, they were touching each other with slick hands and experimenting with showing off to each other and touching each other.  This went on for another hour and they finally went to bed, naked, boy in man’s arms, and discussed entering each other until they fell sound asleep, just like in a fairy tale.
              
              
              “I’m glad I have your address,” Tom commented on the conclusion of his new friend’s story.
              “I’ll be glad when you use it,” Carlos Stone noted.
              “I can sort of picture us whizzing past each other on the Maine Turnpike for six months after you get home,” the writer said, “like in “Evangeline” or the scene in “Lawrence of Arabia” when the long-parted friends racy by each other on their camels.”
              “We’ll have to come up with a system,” the Marine agreed, “maybe including your friend Sandy.”
              The writer nodded in agreement.  Both had stripped out of their camo boxers during the young corporal’s story, and, not wishing to delay their date with the by now hopefully sleeping Viet Cong, arched their backs and came wetly and heavily over each other’s straining, athletic body.  They wiped up the heavy, slick pools of their semen, each taking a tentative lick of the other’s, and experimenting with a brief kiss, more promissory than realized, and slipped quickly back into their fatigues and boots.
              
              Well rested, the soldiers completed their end-run in another five minutes, and then hooked left, following a shallow ravine indicated on the aerial photos.  They estimated the distance to the center of the enemy’s rear and nestled the stretcher between some rocks.  Not enjoying themselves any more, each took a knife from the mound of supplies and munitions, and crept forward.  Training, shmaming, war is cowboy’s and Indians, at least the combat part, and, since Hollywood usually gets it wrong, both had a number of films to fall back on as abject lessons in what not to do.  They moved quickly south seventy or so feet apart, crouched almost double to the ground and moving in silence.  As predicted, the first two sentry’s faced their own garrison.  Healthy sign: two awake, four asleep, enough to indicate this was the sum force of the rear guard.  The two Americans came instinctively together once they’d reconned the flanks fifty meters east and west.  Knelt, well out of earshot.
              
              “I guess we know what to do,” the veteran corporal said to the rookie private.
              “I think I’m happier not doing it,” Tom replied, casting his response obliquely because in truth he knew very well he was happier not doing it.  But interludes of happiness are not what action is all about, and perhaps they’d tampered with the equilibrium of Mars, god of carnage, and so now, having taken their pleasure,  were compelled to restore things to their natural order with a compensating act of savagery. 
              
              Tom concentrated on the flies, the speed of their appearance, their iridescence, how they walked backwards to avoid soaking their tiny feet in the spreading pools of blood, the buzz of new arrivals welcoming themselves to the party.  What kind of life would they, the dead, have had?  Communism was infected with the pat simple-mindedness of the Jew to its core and marrow, offered a bleak, gray monotone of subhuman grinding probably admirably suited to the cockroach but surely worse than death for the smiling and fun-loving.  For mainland China, with its excess billion in population, it probably made sense, order from a little red book possibly somewhat superior to the chaos of anarchy, but, no emperor to love, just the noisiest apparatchik, the most brazen factotum, the cleverest Machiavellian.  Well that was good for the banner business and would subsidize artists who created portraits measured in acres.  As long as one didn’t have to live through it, could laugh at it from afar.  There, in a minor way, he had helped.  Six less.  If they’d been women he could have satisfied himself with an estimated thirty less but he had to shrug that off.  Of course, Carlos had killed four, so that had to be allowed for in the final analysis.  Flies.  Communists.  It was all something to think about as the writer and the corporal quickly stripped out of their U.S. boots and fatigues, rinsed the worst of the blood from the least saturated of the black pajamas, chose V.C. hats and sandals, and coated their white skin with camo body paint.  The writer, perhaps as much to take his mind off the deflating gasp of the ripping knife as anything, found that a few minutes work with knife and shoelace yielded grotesque masks if two of the conical straw hats were used to cover the face, the knife used to cut eye slits, and camouflage paint dabbed on for a more lurid look, still.  In a day when bad meant bad, they looked bad.  Nor did they begin pirouetting in some grand display for each other, rather they scampered back to their weapons cache, getting used to moving in the small sandals, and sat thinking of what to say to each other.
              
              “Too bad we both grew up as library addicts,” Carlos finally said, “if we’d played more ball we could figure out some kind of teamwork thing.”
              “I know,” Tom responded, “guess we’ll have to do it by the book.”
              “Have you ever thrown on of these things?” the corporal wanted to know, hefting a pot-bellied fragmentation grenade.
               “Have we got time for a story, do you think?” the writer asked.
              “Well, you do kind of owe one,” his friend said.
              “I got an expensive watch for my twenty-first birthday,” Tom recounted.  “For some reason, I can’t wear anything on my left wrist, so I wore it on my right – with one of the Spidel bands, the kind you just slip off.  When we went into the grenade  bunkers in Basic, I reared back, all John Wayne, to throw the thing, and as soon as I did, I knew if I pitched it, my watch would fly off behind it, so I just tossed it.  ‘Short round!!’ the guy in the tower screamed, like it mattered behind three feet of concrete, and like it was the only exciting thing that had ever happened in his entire life.  I got raked up one side and down the other by everyone over the rank of E-1, but in all the shouting and schoolgirl commotion not one swinging dick ever asked me why my grenade only went out twenty feet instead of a hundred.”
              “Is that the watch?” the corporal asked.
              “Thanks for reminding me,” Tom said, moving the blood-stained Paiget from his right wrist to his left.
              “Glad I asked,” quotth the young Marine.
              Both wanted to continue the small talk, and, while neither young male had the slightest desire to sleep with the other, they wouldn’t have minded conversing late into the night over a bottle, a pack or two of smokes, and the odd two or three joints.  They settled on one joint, hasty-lungging  it in a couple of minutes as befit their situation. 
              
              “What did you score on the grenade throw on the final p.t. test?” Carlos wanted to know.
              “Perfect,” Tom replied, “someone said I was the only one in the company to do so.”
              “Well,” Stone responded, “I guess there’s comfort in knowing the Army and Marines are kissing cousins in the snafu department.”
              “It’s kind of a story, too,” the private said as the two picked up the heavy stretcher.  “The guy who wrote in my grenade score was totally pissed off, and I didn’t know him from Adam.  I’ve always figured he had a bet going that nobody would max the event, and I rained on his parade.”  Carlos laughed softly and the two headed south.
              
              Fifty yards, seventy, a hundred, a few more.  Wordlessly, the Marine held up two grenades, his index fingers  through the loops on the pins.  Tom jerked them from his friend’s hands, throwing them to the north in quick sequence as Carlos grabbed two more.  They worked with extreme speed and in twenty or thirty seconds had two dozen of the potent little bombs blowing up or airborne.  Tom walked the fire from north to south, pitching two grenades just out of range on their flanks, then pelting them south.  Thirty.  Forty.  No one was counting, but as the number reached something like fifty, they figured that was enough and each grabbed a brace of .45s, a few more grenades, and a sawed-off shotgun.
              
              “It all depends on us,” Carlos said as they began their charge.  “If our guys open fire too soon, the Cong will retreat into our laps.  Probably not survivable.”
              “Well,” Tom shouted back as they began running, “Bing’s already pulled his stunt of the day, so we’ll be okay.”  After that they didn’t have time to say anything to each other, though each found a visceral pleasure in the proximity of his young friend.  They crashed into chaos in their weird masks, blasting with the twelve gauges and pistols, and tossing grenades.  It was all, as they say, asses and elbows as the panicked V.C. rushed south.  Bing did have the men hold their fire and the fleeing combatants completely forgot the firing line, half tumbling pell-mell into the wide clearing.  Tom and Carlos, eyes darting in every direction, shotguns reloaded and at the ready, reached the tree line as the last of the hastily awakened enemy was at fifty meters.
              
              “We better duck,” Carlos said.  It was not the beginning of another entertaining story, so the private dropped in his tracks, both scrambling behind an outcropping as a hail of friendly fire lashed into the jungle.  Peeking out they could see the Marines had held their fire until the V.C. were within fifty feet of their ravine, then, using the alphabet zone system, had mowed them down, totally tearing them up in the process.  Of the hundred or more enemy, all were knocked down in a minute and a half.  As the last dozen fell to the blistering fusillade of automatic fire, the U.S. forces decamped and counter charged through the carnage, snapping their rifles at every prone body.
              
              “This is the dangerous part,” Carlos advised, quickly stripping out of his stolen uniform.  Tom followed his friend, immediately.  “Boxers, too?” he asked.  
              “It might make just the difference,” Carlos said, so both stripped naked, raised their hands, and presented themselves at the tree line.  Twenty rifles trained on the couple in an instant, but they were white, and probably cute, enough that no one pulled a trigger and in half a minute the excruciating tingle at the base of the two spines of the adventurers began to subside and they were able to recover their boxers and walk forward for inspection.  A few more snaps from the AR-15s and the incident was closed, and, in an era yielding to generations of enhanced indifference, closed it would remain for want of the traditional “what did you do in the war?” daddy/granddad quizzing by a bright-eyed child.
              
              Bing approached, handling the big camera like a neophyte Cecil B. De Mille.  Hank, the crew chief, trailed the pilot, his portable recorder plugged into the Panavision camera’s synch outlet, hand mike extended.  As the major approached, he thoughtfully raised the lens, preserving the modesty of the dauntless pair of young heroes.  Seeing what was coming, the couple had retrieved their improvised terror masks and, knowing the importance of business in theater, they donned them even before slipping back into their boxers.  Bing finally ran out of film, releasing his ad hoc stars back into the prosaic world of body counts and canteen water.
              
              Rick brought “Sad Suzanne” to a hover as Bing, Hank, and Tom watched, then, after a few minutes, landed the helo so the three could climb aboard.
              
              “I wish I’d gone with you, now,” Hank Lafleur said as he and the writer settled amongst some duffle bags at the rear of the cargo hold.
              “No,” Tom said, “it’s wicked cool you could sync your recorder with the camera.  It’ll freak ‘em in New York when all of a sudden there’s a sound track.”
              “Thanks,” the nineteen year old Marine tech sergeant said.
              “Where did you get the Nagra?” the photographer asked.
              “My uncle worked at Paramount, even on “The Ten Commandments,” Hank responded.  “He left it to me when he died.”
              “Sorry,” Tom said.  “Are you headed that way?”
              “To Hollywood?” the Marine asked.
              “Yeah.”
              “Kind of have to,” his new friend said, “it’s pretty father and son and uncle and nephew there, for the girls, too.  Beats working for a living.”
              “Couldn’t do it,” the writer responded.  “You must have to have some kind of level of concentration to stay on the ball with all that commotion around you, and respond to your cues.  I’d be thinking how I’d want to re-write the script or be some kind of big shot, and mess it up.  Probably couldn’t be a cameraman, either, not a real one.”
              “Well,” the Hollywood boy said, “I conjured up a clap-board, and wrote T. Emerson in as director, not the major,  though hide nor hair of you was to be seen, so unless your cousin completely botched the lens setting, which he didn’t because he had me check it, you’ve got and Oscar by the short ones.  Plus, you’re getting a Medal of Honor, you and Carlos, both; I heard Bing call it in on the radio while I was still plugged in, you know, in case we get shot out of the sky.  That’s a one two that “Variety” will be chewing on, mucho, mucho.”
              
              “Jesus,” the writer said, “I’ve got some pretty bad news for myself.”
              “What?” Hank asked.  They weren’t cuddled up, exactly, but the noise of the ship made in necessary to lie back with their heads together in order to talk.  The door gunner, plugged in, was out of sight – since they’d annihilated the enemy force in the area, they’d taken an hour to loot the camp while Hank triple-checked for hidden damage. By that time another 46 had arrived, and carried of Carlos and the remains of his detachment (two killed, one wounded in the final V.C. assault).  The cargo hold was partially filled with assorted supplies, including two halves of a Marine Corps. poncho.
              “Well,” Tom murmured, “I have to tell somebody.  I didn’t tell Carlos, Corporal Stone, because of bureaucratic  stuff, but I should have.  I’ll tell him this evening; we’ve got a date.  Anyway, to make a long story short, I got one yesterday.”
              “What?” the sergeant asked.
              “I’m not sure,” the suddenly bashful private said, “that medal thing, I mean yeah, I know what it is, but I don’t want to say it.”
              “The Medal of Honor?” Hank said.
              “It’s embarrassing even when you say it,” the twenty one year old replied.
              “So, in summary,” the Marine murmured after a long pause, “you’re a Concord Emerson and you won two Medals of Honor on consecutive days, plus, now that I’ve had time to think about it, one Academy Award for the jet strike when we were landing, and another for routing the V.C. and saving our scrawny but useable necks.”
              “I don’t need the Army as an enemy, after all,” the writer mused (Hank had been privy to many of the cousins conversations over the intercom), “I’ve done an ace job of being my own worst nightmare of an enemy.”
              
              “And this is because…?”
              “Because I read a book, or rather it was read to me, when I was a kid,” the private said, repeating the substance of the story.  “And,” he added, “that means anonymity; living real with the real, no exceptions to the rule.”
              “Good luck,” Hank said.
              “Well,” Tom said as much thinking aloud as conversing, “there is an aspect to it that might be worth exploring.”
              “What?” Hank asked.
              “Let ‘Variety’ do its thing, puff me up on The Strip, cooperate by acting wild and wooly, then, since I’m into this flying thing as soon as I get out of the Army, anyway, use that as a vehicle.  Fake my death, and slide back down where I belong.”
              “I could identify the body, you know, if you want to get one from a medical school or something,” Hand said.
              “That would be pretty keen,” the private mused after a moment’s silence, “and I think you’d like Sandy and Carlos, so we could arrange it around the four of us being together.”
              “Well, if it helps,” Hank said, “Uncle Jack knew some pretty fair riggers at Paramount.  We could fake something pretty massive, plus there’s obviously plenty of cosmetic surgeons and makeup artists; you know, wigs and stuff, so give us like a year to put it all together, and presto – gonzo.”  They shook hands and exchanged addresses and phone numbers.  Maine and Hollywood.  Extremes.
              
              The helo wandered toward Da Nang at fifty knots, neither Bing nor Rick wanting to overstress the possibly damaged rotors.  They flew at thirty five hundred feet, which was both cool and safe.  The trip would take an hour, with the inevitable holding pattern adding another half hour.  Plenty of fuel, nothing to do, everyone was happy and relaxed.
              
              “Carlos seemed really nice,” Hank said.
              “We had a lot of time to kill while we were circling,” Tom said, “so we got to talk a lot.  It’s so weird.  I’ve never, you know, heard kind of detailed stories about things with anyone, especially another guy, and all of a sudden, in two days, it happens twice.  Sandy yesterday, and Carlos today.”
              “Did you talk about really special stuff?” Hank asked.
              “I didn’t have much to say,” the writer answered, “just a typical summer camp story, but they did.”
              “With, you know, like a lot of details?” the boyish NCO wanted to know.
              “Yeah,” Tom affirmed, “but a lot of it was kinda kids’ stuff, experimenting and things like that.  Some people think that’s sick.”
              “Well, I’m sure it can be,” Hank agreed, “you know, that it can really mess a kid up if some fat mutt badgers a him down, but I don’t think it’s always like that, at all.  I went on location in Santa Fe with Uncle Jack when I was twelve, that’s when I learned the concentration thing, you know, for taking sound, and some stuff happened, and everybody watched out for everybody, and it just made the whole summer incredibly cool, nothing more, nothing less.”
              “That fits with what Sandy and Carlos both told me,” the writer responded.  “It’s a super colossal deal before and during, but in perspective, it’s a few hours a week and could hardly matter less, in the scheme of things.”
              “Same here,” Hank said.  “I agree.  It was incredible that it started happening, but if it hadn’t I’d be exactly the same as I am now, and I certainly wouldn’t go around mooning about it like some poor twelve year old have zombied out by a golden princess with laughing lips.”
              “Three out of three, none faultily educated,” Tom said.  “Must be some truth to it.”
              “I think doing half of it might be weird,” Hank responded, “you know, at a theater or something; sort of knowing something’s happening, but not what; that, along with the intensity of feelings, to say nothing of their novelty, might bend the trolley tracks; but open, honest, and having it happen again and again, no way.  Any kid would respond to that.”
              “Were you with other kids on the set?” Tom asked.
              “The film, “Silent Drive”, was about a boy’s camp – you know, a riding camp – commandeered, so to speak, to drive a heard of doggies to the Pecos during World War I.”
              “That doesn’t seem to fit with the title,” Tom noted.
              “Mute boys,” the Marine explained, “my character teaches them how to play the harmonica so the can lo to the cattle at night.”
              “How many boys?” the writer asked.
              “Two dozen,” his new friend said.  Extreme.
              
              “So you’re a star, then,” Tom asked.
              “Just for that one flick,” Hank replied.  “It’s like Jackie Cogan says, when you start getting hair on your legs, the phone goes silent, but it didn’t matter because the technical side of it is about ten times more realistic than prancing around in front of the cameras.”
              “Writers don’t catch that kind of break,” Tom laughed, “nothing too challenging about a typewriter, marvel though it is.”
              “It’s a lot worse than that,” the Hollywood boy said, “writers get trashed.  Ever since De Mille hogged the spotlight for directors, the guys who turn a dollar’s worth of paper into a ten million dollar picture are left in the wings.  Look at it this way, any director can make a good film from a good script, and none can from a piece of Hemingway or Fitzgerald garbage; conversely, most writers could do a fair-to-middlin’ job of directing a good script, but how many princes of the silver screen can write one?”
              “Well,” Tom responded, “I want to play dead, anyway, so it doesn’t matter one way or the other.”
              “Try to abuse them,” his friend suggested, “you know, before we do you the pearly gates; they love that stuff.”
              “I’d hate to bestow on them any ideas of worth,” the prince responded.  They flew on for some minutes.
              “It was pretty interesting on the set,” Hank finally said.
              “Were the boys real mutes, or actors?” Tom asked, real glad his handsome new friend was still on the same page he was.
              “Only three were really handicapped,” the Marine replied, “and six were girls dressed to look like boys, you know, for background business.”
              “And they were mostly your age?” the private asked.
              “Eighteen to eight,” Hank said.  “I was about in the middle.”
              “Did you like being with older ones or younger ones?” the writer asked.
              “Now there is a question,” Hank laughed, “but if you held my feet to the fire, I guess I’d have to say the younger ones.”
              
              “How about girls versus boys?”
              “Well, Angelina, she was nine, was my most special on, so that prejudiced me.  I guess it was more who they were than what they were.”
              “That’s a start,” Tom nodded.  “How about your uncle?  Were you close with him?”
              “He was great,” the Marine said, “really self-effacing about being, you know, older, in his fifties, so I had to convince him it didn’t matter, that I wanted him to teach me.”
              “He sounds okay,” the Army boy allowed.
              “I’ve always wondered,” Hank responded, “what it would have been like if he had, you know, come on to me.  If that would have spoiled it.”
              “Well,” the writer said, “if he’d hog-tied you and done you over, that probably would have made a difference.”
              “I know,” the handsome twenty year old said, “but short of that.  Everything’s so nervous at the beginning, it’s like, not figuratively, handling a snake.  One bite, or even a hiss, and you’re gonna drop the thing and run, but if it acts nonchalant, then you end up with a beautiful and exotic pet.”
              “Well said,” Tom nodded.  “But my guess is that that made in more exciting than if it was a matter of routine.”
              “I know,” Hank said, “that’s the double-dose of weird.  If I’d just moved in with Uncle Jack and we’d showered together as a matter of course, it wouldn’t have been at all the same thing.”
              
              The two snuggled closer together against the bullet-scarred fuselage of “Sad Suzanne”, on account of the noise (I knew there had to be a reason).  “Do you want to tell me about it?” the writer asked, beginning to unbutton.
              “Yes,” Hank whispered.
              
              
              “Your uncle would be the best one,” Jed Allen said to his new friend, Hank Lafleur.  We have to do voiceovers, and he has to take a lot of ambient sound, you know, so the editor doesn’t go nuts, so he can take us places and we can be alone in the trailer studio with him for looping.”
              “I just don’t know anything about it,” the twelve year old said.
              “But you’re old enough to learn,” the second actor observed.  “I did, on my last picture.  We shot it in a rural part of Italy, and the sound man, Killer Diller, took me out to take sound from a camp of shepherds, you know, their songs and conversation.”
              “But how do I ask him?” Hank wanted to know.  “I mean I don’t think he’s against it, a homophobe, or anything, but he’d probably tell me to go with someone your age, you know, if I wanted to learn.”
              “I see what you mean,” the sixteen year old said, “but I think it’s really worth trying.  Yeah, we could jack off together behind a tree somewhere, but you’re too nice a kid to go all rabbit.  The first time should be really nervous and last a long time, and I don’t care how old he is, he looks like an Olympic swimmer, cute, in a word, and he’ll know how to make it last without teasing or acting all biker and bawdy.  
              “Did you see the trunk of books he brought?”
              “Definitely,” Hank said, “he says that’s how he’s able to function as a sound man.  His downtime is so rich, you know, with all the reading, when it comes time to concentrate amidst all the confusion on the set, he can still react instantly when the A.D. calls his cue.”
              “Well,” the older actor said, “I’d hate to burst that bubble by getting interested in you, you know, having too much to enrich his downtime so it distracted him.”
              “That’s a good point,” Hank said.
              “Yeah,” Jed nodded, “and I’d say it might be the overriding one if he wasn’t your uncle, just a guy on a gig.  But that’s something special.  Worth taking the risk, and I think it’s a pretty small one.”
              
              “Was your first time, you know, incest?” the boy asked his older friend.
              “Yes,” Jed said, “and kind of similar, too.  They say write what you know, so I’m telling you what I know, and that is that a guy his age, Uncle Charles was forty-eight, is the best of the best.”
              “Where did it happen?” Hank asked.
              “It wasn’t anything special, that way,” the older boy said, “it just happened in the bathtub of our house, when he came to visit, but we talked a lot, and by the time I led him into my bedroom, I was so excited I thought it was going to happen while we were walking down the hall.
              “I want that for you.  So you can learn about talking and taking it slow, even like we’re doing, now.”
              “Is a lot of stuff going to be happening while we’re in Santa Fe?” Hank asked.
              “Yeah,” his friend said.  “It’s pretty open on a set with kids.  They have to do lines with the older actors, and that leads to hanging out together, and that leads to pretty close relationships.  The joke is, if parents are along, as chaperones, they’re usually the ones who encourage their kids to experiment, at least by letting them, if not actually telling them to.”
              “Will Mr. Bronson do anything with us?” Hank asked, referring to the film’s star.
              “Not if you’re a virgin,” Jed replied, “he’s really careful and discrete, and he’d be the first one to tell you to spend lots of time with your uncle, first, before you start welcoming more casual partners.”
              “Does it have to be just him and me?” the twelve year old wanted to know.
              “I don’t suppose so,” Jed mused, “small groups are part of what goes on, once it starts happening, so I don’t see why starting with one would matter.”
              “If we both think he’s cute,” Hand said, “that might help.  Two against one, plus you could tell him about having a mature man teach you, and that might help.”
              “I’ll think about it,” Jed said, “meantime, try on your own.  I want to be long-term friends with you, whatever happens or doesn’t happen on this gig, so I want it to be the best it can be for you, the way it was for me.”
              
              They talked more, ate at the field commissary, then headed to their respective trailers.
              
              “You still look as good as this,” Hank Lafleur said to his uncle.  He was leafing through a scrapbook and his finger had paused over a photo of the technician taken in his mid-twenties.
              “Thanks, Hank,” the man said, “but it takes younger, brighter eyes than mine to see it.”
              “Well, I do,” the boy responded, “I see that you’ll probably be cute when you’re seventy.  I just hope I have some of the same genes.”
              “You’ve gotten off to a great start,” the man responded, and added: “Wanna read?” a little aw-shucks about the whole thing and wanting to change the subject. 
              The photograph was of Jack Melrose in a swim suit.  Hank’s eyes remained fixed on it.  “A picture’s worth a thousand words,” he murmured with a shy smile.
              “Well, I’m very flattered,” Jack said.
              “Are there any more where you’re not, you know, all dressed up?” the child asked.
              “I suppose,” the man said, “one or two.”
              “How far ahead are they, I mean approximately?” Hank asked, obviously loath to interrupt his perusal of the present image.
              
              “I don’t know,” the engineer said, his voice suddenly low and husky.  “And if I did, I wouldn’t be able to tell you,” he mused to himself, so giddily smitten was he by the handsome preteen’s obvious excitement as the boy actually fingered his admittedly svelte image on the amateur eight-by-ten glossy, his head was spinning.  Sitting side by side on the small couch of the trailer wasn’t helping, either.  Time to change the subject.  He gently closed the album, restoring it to the small coffee table.
              
              “Did you meet most of the cast and crew?” he asked, not having seen his nephew since the beginning of blocking that morning.
              “I spent most of my time with Jed Melrose,” Hank replied.  “He’s really nice.”
              “Good choice,” Jack affirmed, “he’s a worker.  No re-takes.  Saves a lot of wear and tear on everybody.”
              “We talked a lot,” the twelve year old said, “and about, you know, quite a lot of different subjects, too; even, you know, some mature ones.”
              “This picture should be okay,” Jack responded, “Chuck’s a good guy, and we don’t have a lot of biker trash lurking around, but he’s the right boy to hang out with, because it’s not always safe.  I guess I should have talked to you about it earlier, but a location can be a dangerous place; lotta guys with records, but the can play a role, so the get a job, and anything cute comes along, they want it, male or female.  It’s probably okay here, but it isn’t, always, so be cool, but be on your guard.”
              
              “I think things could not happen, too,” Hank said, “for example,” and he retrieved the album, opening back to the swimsuit picture, “if a boy was pretty mature, and knew what he wanted, and hinted at what he wanted, even though it was really embarrassing to do so, and the hint was ignored and his wanting, dismissed, that would be something that didn’t happen.”
              “I think it should happen with you,” Jack said, “everything you want, and Jed’s the perfect person to be your guide, if that’s what you want to call it; Chuck, too, for that matter, he’s twenty-odd years younger than I am.”
              
              “We talked about stuff like that,” Hank acknowledged, “and he said kinda the opposite, that age and stuff doesn’t matter, that there are more important things, you know, like being close in a lot of ways and having a relationship that will last, not just be an offhand novelty act.”  The boy told his uncle about his friend’s uncle. The two continued sitting side by side.  Jack reached our and fingered the album, flipping to a further page and another candid shot of himself in swimming trunks.
              “I thought so,” purred the boy, looking happily up at the handsome, perhaps a little Jack Palance looking Hollywood veteran at his side, and indeed the second photo, though in no way provocative, did show a craggy and unassumingly sexy guy.  “Did you do anything when you were my age?” he asked.
              “Too busy,” the man replied, “life was pretty hardscrapple in those days, and it was generally thought that deviant behavior led to enervating dissolution and an unproductive, philandering  feyness.”
              “Well,” the boy said with a shy smile, “we’re in Santa Fe, Saint Fey, if you will, and it see