Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 00:20:55 -0600 From: Tom Emerson Subject: POET OF PHU BAI - NIFTY ED. FILE III (CONC.) "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 seems about like anywhere else, except it's a lot more beautiful." "I think you're right," Jack said, "it isn't such a deal. I did get wiser as I got older, and even though I missed any special excitement when I was twelve, things began looking up when I got in this business, and I was able to make up for lost time, so to speak." "Cool," the boy said, "I was hoping you hadn't cast yourself in cement." "Hardly," Jack laughed. "My first picture was `Bolt-Action Blues', about an Ozark clan that got the first Springfield rifles and managed to unite two hollers and a ridge against themselves. We were shooting one day and I heard a bird I'd never heard before. Stereotypically, I guess, a boy named Bo was assigned to guide me to where I could get both the male and the female. And that was just the beginning of the stereotyping. Bo was a snaggle-toothed thirteen year old, tall, lanky, muscular, chewing a straw, and dressed in a tattered union suit held sort of up with strings." "Did you think about things when you first saw him?" the boy asked. "Well," Jack replied, "it's like this, he had his little sister along. Jillie. Ten years old. Their mother was far from the stereotypical mountain slattern, a reading kind of lady it turned out, and she said as we got in the car, putting on a moonshine drawl for the fun of it, `Don't you go mindin' if these two get to misbehavin', they adore each other hot and cold, so it's right as spring plowing in the soft, warm loam, and if you or Bo plump her up, why it won't be any earlier than I became heavy with my brother, Elk's, seed, and this here sprig is the result.' Here she patted her son on the shoulder. She was twenty three or four, that meant, and she looked like a teenager and more like Jillie's sister than mom." Hank flushed and his breathing became a little ragged. Up to that point, he'd kept his legs crossed, not wanting to display the bulge in his denim shorts. Now he lay back on the sofa, lowering and spreading his legs, and thrilled to the gaze of his handsome uncle. "Can you tell me all about it?" he whispered, leaning almost bashfully into the older male. "It might be the right way to start," he admitted, "so you'll know a little bit what to expect if you keep sitting there like some kind of boy angel and really decide it's what you want, with plenty of time to back out if what happened by Zipper Creek is not to your liking." "The only thing I was thinking it might be good to be out of," Hank responded, "is these shorts. Is anyone likely to come by, or do you think we could, you know, just wear our underwear while you tell me about what happened with Bo and Jillie." "No," the man said, "unlikely anyone will drop by, first night. Tomorrow I'll have some friends over to pay bridge, but tonight should be quiet, plus, I don't suppose it would take long to slip into something if someone did happen by." "Would it be okay, then?" "If you're sure," the adult cautioned. "Why don't you take your shirt and shorts off in the bathroom, and I'll be out of mine when you get back." "Cool," Hank said, and disappeared into the yacht size toilet. the year was 1961, so there was nothing radical in the appearance of either as the small door opened and Hank returned to the couch. They both whispered Hi to each other, and sat, the child on the man's left. "We drove about ten miles," the uncle began, "the kids, both in the front seat, singing: `we like strippin' to go in dippin' and so we're trippin' o'er the mountains, and vice is nice, but incest is best, and on a log playin' and hot seed sprayin', and baby prayin', `cause that's the way to live, o'er the mountains.'" "Wow," Hank half whistled. "It was that and then some," Jack said, "a whole new world. They wanted that baby so much, he or she became a fourth presence in the car. You half couldn't think about it in comparison to even the supposedly loose ways of Southern California, the naturalness of a brother and sister teaming up that way, of a girl learning with someone she loved, then, as I found out, having a limited number of men to fulfill her as a woman, pretty much any time she wanted -- no jealousy, no baggage, just enough hot pleasure to strip every city and suburb if the real story ever got out." "That must be why they have churches," Hank said, "to pretend it's evil and sin and taboo, so the economic system isn't thrown into reverse." "Well," Jack said, "there was more truth and beauty in Bo and Jillie than was preached from any pulpit, but they were likely an exception and half the time the preachers are probably right, though it's hard to segregate the impact of the act from the associated psychic bag and baggage." "Jed thinks a lot depends on the first time," Hank noted. "He's right," the man said, "although I suppose a kid that's been done over, and then meets the right person, things will right themselves with a little time and patience. Most of the time when you get sick, you get well after awhile. Something like that." "How long had it been going on between Bo and his little sister, did you find out?" "Since her tenth birthday, just a few months earlier," Jack said. "In fact, one of the reasons it all happened is that Becca Atwater, their mother, wanted Jillie to be with, well, put it this way, a lesser man than her brother whom she, Jillie, was going to spend some time with at the end of the summer." "How did you find that out?" the boy wanted to know. "From Bo," Jack laughed, "they were exactly as open as kids from our backgrounds are cloistered. If you think back on history, all it would have taken was one honest proponent, and that would be our accepted way: that girls could have a child, incest bred or otherwise, as early as possible in life, and once child, only; that's where morality should have stepped in, to actually protect young girls from becoming brood mares before they'd had any time to experience or enjoy a free life. Every marriageable woman, in our sense of the word, should have been able to have her special little helper as a traditional part of her dowry. How many grooms would object to that?" "Probably have kept a lot of men out of the saloons," Hank nodded. "Absolutely," Jack said, "and all it would be is a slight variation on our restricted culture. Not exactly turning the world upside down. Even now, the big bugaboo with young motherhood is that they can't go out on Saturday night with their friends, because they have to care for junior, no allowance made, a, for the fact that many women love taking care of babies, and, b, that any but poverty stricken families, where it obviously shouldn't happen, can afford at least some help, in addition to that provided by the family, at large, so the young mother can track with her peers. In a society callous toward children, the pat system is probably the lesser evil, but that's not saying very much." "Was Bo, you know, old enough to make a baby?" Hank asked, blushing. "He probably could have done justice to a herd of elephants," Jack replied. "When we talked, later, he told me he'd been active with his father/brother, Elk, on several hunting trips; taken seed in his mouth, in fact, of several young men on the trip. That much sperm, when a boy's around nine or ten, somehow aids in his development both in size and potency, so the short answer is he was totally able to freshen his little sister the day her body was ready to react to his sperm." "The world should be different," Hank mused. It was the time they'd scheduled, in the primitive, pre-bonding/quality-time era, for reading together, so neither male was loath to spend some of their time in testing the limits of their ability to put the great phantasmal kaleidoscope of philosophy into words that weren't utter dithering nonsense from soup to nuts. "People are tribal," Jack responded, "and a tribe needs an ugum-unk-unk for ritual purposes. One good and sane apostle, wise man, disciple in the right time and place, or charismatic advocate, and yes, it would be different. Children of eight or nine would be taken into the marriage bed on a restricted basis, because, again, where the naysayers are right is when it comes to psychological exploitation and/or physical overindulgence, which, amazingly enough, happens to be true in respect to food, alcohol, gambling, and a Pandora's Box full of glittering distractions. The family, again, assuming the absence of poverty, would be thrilled with the swelling of the eldest daughter tender, pre-teen belly, and ravish her wantonly as her body changed. Welcome the child, possibly of unknown parentage, assuming fertile brothers, into their home. Saner than sane is sane, with the opposite being equally true: to believe otherwise, again, assuming the child's willing participation, is not sane, not human, and nothing more than a liturgical ugum-unk-unk." "Couldn't poor, white families make babies to sell?" Hank wondered. "I knew I invited you for a reason," Jack laughed, patting the young beauty's close-cropped sandy brown hair. "That would be too brilliant for words. Advanced society is based on grinding stupidity, huge numbers of people doing absolutely ridiculous things with great devotion in order to keep the bucks flowing. A father or uncle breeding out two or three babies from his daughters or nieces -- never more than one each -- could enhance his family's well being for the coming ten generations, and there's no reason the babies couldn't retain a positive tie with their natural mothers, as close to them, in their mature years, as their adoptive parents. This would work so well, prosperous families would take it up as the upper classes always take up things like hot dogs, idiom, music, and dancing from the lower classes. Then everyone would start reading and staying home and not squandering fortunes on gridiron spectacles, lake cottages, and the like, and down would come cradle, baby and all." "Is stuff happening," the boy half blushed, "like inside us while we're talking?" "Does it feel that way?" his uncle whispered. "Yes," came the answering whisper. "It does to me, too," Jack said, "so yes, probably quite a lot is happening." "Will that make it more exciting when you pull my underpants down?" he then wanted to know. "That's the universal paradox," the engineer said. "It will make it much more exciting, but how long can you wait to experience the feeling of your body tensing and shaking, then suddenly going slack and loose as your semen splashes on Jed's chest or maybe that cute little Angelina, whom, instinct tells me, has roped you out of the herd, and I don't mean maybe?" "Would she want to see what happens on her chest the first time?" Hand wondered. "If she's been with mature boys before," Jack replied, "she'd probably want you to ejaculate inside her; but if her father, and brothers if she has them, have ignored her, you know, as a girl, then she'll likely be very eager to watch you cum off. There's nothing on earth more beautiful than watching a boy like Bo spilling his seed, beauty, of course, being subjective." "But it doesn't sound ugly," Hank said. "Viva la mystery, I guess," Jack responded, "because the underlying irony is that if was tolerated, sanctioned, and accepted, the beauty would be a mite hollow, no sin attached, but, the way things are, the evil nature of a child's thin, watery sperm splashing all over a receptive females immature chest is part and parcel of the ultimate experience, however ugly it might appear to the very culturally deprived who instill the thrill of taboo." "More complicated than Chinese arithmetic," the twelve year old nephew observed. "Well," the M.I.T graduate said, "history is full of the backhanded and at least half of it is traceable to unintended consequences, the arch villain of our age, for example, in truth the absolute hero for stopping a villain to the whom the adjective `arch' would be applicable while it napped, so maybe, logic being where you find it, it's just possible that all contemporary religion really offers is far greater excitement to those who defy it." "And that makes a case for it, cast entirely in the negative," the young bookhound mused. "Yes," the proud and loving uncle said, "because think of the opposite. If we'd showered together, I mean, not here in this little trailer, but somewhere comfortable, as a matter of course, and enjoyed each other for ten minutes, would that be anything like what's happening now?" "I -- don't -- think -- so," the boy intoned with a shy smile, adding: "at least not the first time." Again, a bolt of pride shot through the boyish engineer. "Well spoken," he said, amazed at the child's intuitive grasp of a subject that was a good working definition of the word "mature". "As your friend Jed said, the first time can be totally special. At a future time, yes, it may be ten minutes together in the slower, pretty much physical; talking about books or history while we make each other tense. It is, after all," he went on, "only sex. Probably just about ten minutes a day taken at three day intervals for a well adjusted couple, however feral they are together in the first days and weeks." "One-seventy-fourth of one's life. It would seem someone has gone out of their way, at some time or the other, to make quite a mountain out of a molehill." "Sometimes people think about it as well as doing it," Jack noted, "so that time is relevant to the equation." "But wouldn't that make it all BUT one-seventy-fourth?" Hank queried. "At your age, it might at that," Jack allowed, "but maturity brings moderation. Someone my age might be free of salacious thoughts and fantasies for say one-fiftieth of an average day." "But you're a soundman, you have to concentrate," the boy noted, "that must be the reason you're falling behind." "Yes, but doesn't that mean I always have to be ready for, you know, Action?" Jack asked. The boy, trying so hard to be mature, present time, present circumstances, couldn't entirely choke back a giggle. "Did you kid around with Bo and Jillie?" he wanted to know, "or were you too nervous?" "He asked me," Jack replied, "if I knew how circumcision was performed in Arkansas. I said I didn't know. He said by kicking the boy's sister in the chin." Both agreed it was funny, at least in the abstract, and Jack added that, yes, he'd been plenty nervous, and, though the mood had been affectionate and lighthearted, the tension in the twenty four year old virgin, notwithstanding, it probably wouldn't be quite right to call it frivolous. "How long was it before you got to see Jillie's bare chest?" Hank whispered to the tall, rangy athlete beside him. "Well," Jack said, "the commissary had packed a pretty extravagant picnic lunch for us, and, though they ate well enough, the kids hadn't been exposed to imported cheeses, ham, and other delicacies that kept the average location set from becoming a charnel house of hatchet wielding madmen, so we actually sort of got to know each other over things like exotic biscuits with pâté" and preserved wild strawberries on melba toast. In other words, until we got to Zipper Creek we might have been in the middle of Disneyland. There we spread out the blanket, and the kids went at a tub full of Swedish meatballs while I set up the miniature Nagra and a parabolic microphone dish beside a pool in the stream. They were readers, in spite of the Appalachian clichés, so we talked about where the food came from, and, of course, nothing would do that they had to know everything about the bottles of wine in the basket, and, bright-eyed duo that they were, they wanted to know more than just, you know, where it came from." "So there it went?" the boy asked, in a neat bit of verbal punctuation. "Gone but for the wind in the empty bottles," the adult sighed, "yes, it stood little chance with Moonshine One and Moonshine Two on the scene." "Do you know what the Ozark method of preventing cramps is," the gangly thirteen year old asked the Hollywood visitor. "Not offhand," the young audio engineer said. "Skinny-dipping with someone you really like," Bo explained, "but Mom doesn't know if it's psychological, you know, anticipating what will happen pretty soon if you're smart enough not to have a cramp and drown, or physical, because being close to someone you really like, and who really likes you, keeps the blood circulating too fast to cause a cramp in the first place." "A question for the ages, and certainly more intriguing than Arkansan rites of passage," Jack agreed, finding himself wantonly thrilled at being fresh into real live, living, life, and, for the first time he could recall, free of a vague feeling of being left out which had very mildly frustrated the years his academic colleagues had traded grades for the possession of young, but still adult, females. "I think it's a question of the ages, too," Bo deadpanned, "and ten is the world's most perfect age for a girl, just like thirteen to sixty is the most perfect age for a male." Both assumed it was something they weren't going to argue about, and the boy added that eight through thirteen were all pretty good for a female, and a girl could look good until sixty, too, if she was careful about herself. "Your mom's a pretty good example of that," the young engineer said, adding: "speaking of which, who is your father, Jillie?". "Known but to god," the sweetie said, "Mom went and spent a week in Hot Springs. Her strategy was, since she'd first conceived with a fifteen year old, to tree the best looking older males running around loose. She kept a list of all seven who freshened her and I'm going to visit them over the coming year so I can lie back and take incestuous seed, and maybe even figure out, you know, without medical tests or anything scientific, which man fathered me inside her." "Well," young Jack said, "if we lived twenty feet from the entrance to the sacred molehill, it would be a great story for a film." "I could take lots of notes and keep a diary," the pretty child said. "That would be great," the young adult said, "and I've got an outdated Nagra that works fine, so, if you took some pictures with a good 35mm camera, you could put together a documentary, not for consideration by The Academy, or anything, but more so that when you fall in love with some lucky devil, you can turn him into the world's most avidly loving husband." "Would you help me?" the bright-eyes asked. "This is an ace picture we're working on," Jack replied, "so there will probably be some kind of sequel or derivative project in this area, and if that doesn't happen, you can come live in Hollywood for awhile." "Deal," said both the beautiful children, offering hands. "I guess another way to avoid cramps," Jack noted, "is to sit around talking for half an hour before we swim." "We never heard of that," Bo said, his sister nodding beside him, then they shook their heads parroting: `Nah,' and looking skeptical. When in Rome, do as the Romans, when dealing with folklore, take the lure. The flaxen-mopped pixie was overdressed in a pink party dress, dainty and innocent enough to suit a fairy-tale princess, except the child's mother had carefully trimmed the neckline so the fabric rode low on the girl's suddenly heaving chest. Both males stared and rose from the picnic blanket to their knees, as did the ten year old female. They moved to each other, Jillie facing her handsome, young stallions, their hands going to her sprightly, gamin face, then, Bo leading, tracing her boyish jaw and long, coltish neck to her delicate white collar and inner shoulders. "Bo knows how the catch on this dress works," the girl whispered, "and I don't want to get it rumpled," It made her look six or seven, and, though neither male would have -- willing as she was -- minded that, well, not to put too fine a point on it, even in those days, who wouldn't have preferred a ten? The not quite gaunt, sinewy boy moved behind his little sister, kissing her neck gently and reminding her they had all afternoon, because the birds were unreliable and their voices on the soundtrack of the upcoming feature would add texture to the already bold and gritty script. They'd discussed this on the short drive, but reminded, the girl did relax, while the engineer wondered which of his exotic math courses in Cambridge would have helped equate the time of anticipation with the gratification of eventual fulfillment. "What fun you could have if you ever could write this," Jack thought, "you could tantalize readers half blind, each of them knowing you were totally right, and yet hating your prevaricating, sashaying style until they ground their teeth. "Might be a thought to try to throw in some funny scenes," he concluded his silent musing, "so there wouldn't be a rebellion, and, of course, an end scene, well, sure-`nuff, a climax, leaving no reader of a hundred less than totally satisfied, not only with the work of the artist, but with himself for his obedience and abstinence" -- (in the modern era, a trust-me kind of thing). They preached peace, yet were padre-on-the-spot when it came to their wars. How could that be so universally seen as evil, the Inquisition, the Salem trials, ad nauseum, yet when they preached total abstinence for all children under all circumstances, which they most certainly did, their flocks knelt in acquiescence and humility? Why would bad people make good decisions? How bad was it to disobey the bad? Acoustics was a vague enough science, laden as it was with overtones, reverberation, nulls, hot spots, and various cycles, pitches, resonances, waves and counter-waves, but it was like two and two is four compared to the ethics and mores of human behavior from bar to boardroom and cradle to knave, if that was an apt voicing of conventional opinion. Bad standards versus none at all. Sure. But that left out good standards. And those had so often been the standard in cultures -- specifically Greek -- renowned, at least in part, to the present day, not something dreamed up by some kind of aberrant dervishes and Cyclopian fiends.. Yet without them it would be bump-bump-thanks-for-the-hump. These thoughts coursed through Jack Melrose's mind for some moments, and it was with a feeling of relief that he watched Jillie take his semi-conscious hands and guide the away from each other over her slim, ten-year-old shoulders and realized he had, literally, in his grasp, ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the answer. Both males opened her gently, slowly, like botanists exploring and incredibly rare flower. Each inch was a treasure to the young and aesthetically sensitive audio artist, and that one led to another. Could such reverie be interrupted? "Bo," Jillie whispered over her should, "before you take it off pull it a little against me and look at my front, see if you notice anything." "I told you not to play with the lawnmower," the -- it was apparent -- savagely intelligent boy said, adding: "did she get you one?" "This morning, first thing," the girl said. "Congratulations," Bo said, nuzzling her neck then looking up at Jack. "Her first bra," he explained, which did send rather a flood of relief through the hero of this act, as the two had had him wondering for a moment there. "Yes," Jack choked, and, with Bo again nuzzling her from behind and unzipping her cheap party dress, he slowly pulled the fabric off her delicate shoulders and further down her flat chest. "I want to look in front, with you," the boy said, moving beside the soundman. He took her right shoulder and Jack, the left, and they uncovered the panting child to her waist. Both traced their fingers around the wisp of a training bra, ever bolder in approaching the marble size protrusions at the center of each dainty pink cup. Alternately they looked into her big hazel eyes, wide but slackening, and then down again at her as they unsnapped the undergarment and lower it to the dress spilled at Jillie's knees. For ten minutes or more they molested the girl just with their finger tips. She laced her hands behind her neck in response, breathing rapidly and arching in welcome. Bo moved behind her and gently raised her, allowing Jack to collect and fold the silly but extremely provocative pink dress. Kneeling behind the standing child, her brother slowly lowered her panties to her ankles, holding a hand against her left hip as she stepped out of them, then bracing her from the back, allowing her to spread her legs in front of the tall, athletic visitor from California. "Don't fall," Bo whispered, standing behind the now naked girl. "I'm okay," she whispered. Nodding to his guest, the boy stripped quickly out of shirts and shorts while Jack stood in place and did the same. "The men always like to pull my underpants down," he whispered, standing beside his sister, his left arm on her shoulder. The adult returned to his knees. "How many undergarments had Plato, Aristotle, or Socrates removed from pubescent boys?" the college man found himself wondering. "How many had pleaded, `oh, please, Mr. S., I love you, and you've taught me the world, but I'm not that kind of boy? "The humor part might work," Jack mused on to himself as his hands slowly left Jillie's bare chest and found the stringy, athletic waist, no less heaving than the beauty of the younger child, of the thirteen year old, "because the absurdity of the modern condition has to be of some value, if only fodder for the sardonic wit." He realized the underlying fallacy of his logic; no law said the modern condition had to be of any measurable value, whatever. Chalked it up to wishful thinking. "Isn't he beautiful?" Jillie breathed as her brother's slim, almost six-inch erection came into view. The tall naked savage jutted high and straight between his long, white legs, circumcised, standing out at something of an angle even though he appeared hard as wood. "Elk looks just like this," Bo whispered, "only thicker and quite a bit longer." "Let me do yours," Jillie whispered, nodding to Jack. He stood and she knelt in front of him, using her hands as he had used his on her body, then freeing him and getting him naked. He was hard as the boy, notably longer and thicker, also circumcised, and set the girl to cooing and half drooling. For long moments the aesthetics of sensuality reigned supreme as the three stood in an almost shoulder-to-shoulder circle taking in views from various angles and pondering more deeply than might be expected the compelling relationship of form and function. "I guess if beauty was at the core of the issue," Jillie murmured, "I'd get pregnant from just looking at you." A cruder god, it goes without saying, pulled the strings. "Now that you're wearing a bra, it could happen anytime," Bo said. "Mom said I developed suddenly, in a few days, because of what happened with you and Uncle Elk and his friends, which made you more potent, so being complete inside me every night is having an effect." "Do you suppose Reverend Michaels would include that in a list of mysterious ways?" the boy said. "Well," the dazzling, naked girl said to her brother as she again knelt and nodded as an indication that both males should follow her example, "I doubt it's unprecedented, especially here in the Ozarks, but still and all, original, and he'd be the first to agree, at least in public, definitely a sin, so it seems to me the theological aspect is pretty much cut and dried, or at least it's convenient to think so." "She's never seen it happen with me," Bo whispered to Jack, moving in front of the tall, athletic adult. The boy arched from his knees to his shoulders linking his finger's behind the older male's neck. Jack wrapped his powerful left arm around the muscular chest of the coltish thirteen year old, finding the youth with his right hand, fondling him, then masturbating him openly as Jillie stared down at her brother's bone hard erection, it's glans flaring wildly, inches from her tender, little-girl belly. "Can I take you sperm in my hands, Bo?" she whispered, "and put it on, you know, where I'm starting to grow?" "Yes, baby," the boy rasp, now panting raggedly and seeming to strain in every corded sinew and muscle. Jack helped by holding the sweating child in the right position and stroking his adult-size erection in a predictable and disciplined manner. The eyes of the children flashed on each other, practically emitting sparks, but they also spent much time staring down at each other as the tension in each young body rose like the mercury in a candy thermometer. "Have you ever watched it happen with a young boy?" Jillie whispered to Jack. "No," he said, gazing avidly over Bo's right shoulder as he continued stroking the beautiful thirteen year old male child. "It feels so amazing when he holds me still at the end," the girl elaborated, "it just has to be beautiful to watch." "Does he leave you really wet; is he an adult that way?" the engineer whispered to the panting pixie. "Totally," the girl said, "like I'd been with animals." Jack nodded silently, not surprised in the least that the schoolgirl could bring out the beast in a boy. By now the three were hunched half over each other, their movements becoming slower and more studied as the panting boy hissed and turned to iron. "I'm cumming, Jillie," he whispered. Six eyes confirmed it, but, once the fact was established, did not avert themselves, satisfied, but rather stared in undiminished awe as the young teen's long, slim penis spurted hard, again and again, into the pretty little cupped hands of the ten year old female. Seeming on the verge of collapse as the adult milked the last of his hot semen into the panting girl's palms, the mountain boy was nothing of the kind. No sooner had his copious spend ended than he manhandled his sister on her back, guided her legs wide apart, then mounted the back of the adult male, reaching under Jack's waist with his left hand and guiding him inside Jillie as she slicked her swollen, pink nipples with her brother's sperm. Jack made the transition from virgin to the depths of perdition in a series of short, gentle strokes, dozens and dozens of them, as the girl cooed and wiggled in open heat beneath his powerful swimmer's body. "Like down against me," the girl coached, "so you can feel Bo's seed against your chest." Again it was at least nominally original, again it was super sin, and, as before, the tower of sensations, physical and psychological, could not grow forever but must topple back to earth with a shuddering, trashing crash. With a feral grunt, almost angry, the athlete took the flailing child as she'd never been taken before, fully raping her hard and fast, and going one and on, minute after minute, harder, faster, deeper, more and more urgently, until both male and female were hot wired, fused, and beginning to smoke and melt. Bo flanked them on Jack right, steadying himself on the steel muscled of the plunging waist, and masturbated hard between their mating bodies. Jack rose high on his arms, all three stared down, then froze rigidly as the girl's skipping hisses focused into a panting scream of welcome. If Bo had been an animal with her, the new stag was a herd, his hot, white semen gouting from around his shaft as he spent, held in a lock-tight grip by the girl, again and again high between her slim, dancer's legs. "Would you like to hear the tape?" the boyish, middle-aged male asked his twelve year old nephew. "You mean of them?" Hank asked. "We were in a kind of grotto," Jack replied, "perfect acoustics. Fifteen inches per second. Two thousand dollar Senheiser. It was the best wild audio I ever took." "Sure," Hank said. His handsome, lithe uncle leaned to a small file cabinet that served as an end table for the little sofa, and retrieved a three inch reel of Scotch tape, quickly threading it into the same now nearly antique Nagra recorder he'd used on his first films. He plugged the portable unit into the trailer's hi-fi system and made sure to turn the volume well down, then moved the lever to Play. As in the photography of the time, nothing really compared with the master media. "Wow," Hank whistled as the shockingly clear audio image filled the trailer, "you can hear her sweating." "Do you want me to masturbate you like I did Bo while you listen?" the still standing male whispered. Hank zipped out of his undershirt and as the man stared, pulled down his underpants. Let his uncle ogle for a few moments, then stood, back to the rugged athlete. Jack's arm encircled the twelve year old's panting chest, and with his right hand he fondled the fledgling as the boy spread his legs and raised his arms so he could lock his fingers in back of his partner's head. They listened to everything, the whispering, the hard breathing, the ambient summer sounds, the palpable rise in tension, and, extraordinarily, the almost inaudible sizzling splashing sounds of Bo's first red hot sprays into his sister's hands. Hank came hard and fast in sympathetic conjunction, his sperm showering copiously all over the leather couch, his own arching torso, and even a splash of watery pearlessence on the swimmer's bulky left shoulder. Panting, they sat, the boy on the man's lap, facing him, and collapsing against him at the man hugged his beautiful preteen body, running his fingers up and down the willowy back. As they listened to the sounds on the tape return to what would be considered normal in a post-apple world, a series of exotic notes trilled from the speaker of the high-fi. "That's the son of a twit," Jack laughed. "Sure, he showed up just at the strategic time, didn't make any secret of himself or herself, only a vet can tell for sure, and chirped and sang away in plain sight." "The Audubon people must have gone crazy," Hank said. "They would have, with laughter," the man said, "because it was a gray parrot. It was so tame we actually were able to pluck it off its branch. It had been owned by a professional ornithologist, caged in his studio. Fraud from alpha to zed." "Wow," Hank said again, "that must have been a real disappointment." "More funny than anything," Jack said, "and we did manage to find the owner with a little radio advertising, and he led me... but that's another story." "Cool," said the boy, feeling very grown up at using the jazz word. "But the picnic wasn't a total loss from a scientific point of view," Jack allowed: "We learned a foolproof way to prevent drowning from cramps, because we never did make it into Zipper Creek." "Do you want to hear the tape?" the tech sergeant asked Tom, reaching for the ammo box which held his machine. "As long as there's no gunfire on it," the Army boy replied, unbuttoning his fatigue jersey as his friend carefully assembled the equipment, handing him an expensive set of headphones. Hank also unbuttoned, and, although the situation was not appropriate to being naked with each other, both young males got half naked as the writer mimicked sounds coming over the headphones so his partner could stay synchronized as they masturbated first themselves and then each other to long, wet, boyish climaxes. As I've mentioned along the way, this novel is an adapted screenplay. Above is the last Nifty scene, fair warning, and, since I can't improve on the story's ending, I'm pasting it in from the original draft. ACT IV FADE IN: : (NIGHT, INT. (STANDARD FORMAT)). BING'S HOOCH. ABOUT TWENTY PILOTS ARE PRESENT, FOR THE MOST PART GOING ABOUT THEIR BUSINESS IN THE BACKGROUND. BING AND TOM SIT ON ONE BUNK, CHUCK AND ED, OPPOSITE. BING Twelve hours. You may make it yet. TOM It's worse than being a freshman, scaffold wise. Something like having to live when you know you want to die where man has been for twenty thousand years, forever young. We're paying two cents here, so K-Mart has the freedom to leach our towns of business and leave them dusty husks; where materialism not only comes, but conquers, freely. I wonder if we should watch out; if we won't go headlong in debt, demanding bigger this and more of that, getting fatter until we die simply of ourselves. We read less, watch more, and let hippies rule the day. Not coming back might not be so bad. I knew a Korean vet once who said the worst thing that happened to him over there, was surviving it. You have to work like a savage to make it in a material world, where all you end up with is twice as much at ten times the fuss. As to the military, it needs the great arbitrary hand, and all a victim can do, in the end, is demonstrate to others that Yes, that need is paramount, if not absolute. If it bent to me, it would have to bend to you, and that would be that. BING I'll miss you over my shoulder tomorrow. You've been good company. TOM Thanks. First hippie I see, I'll tell him, wow, dude, I've tripped too. BING I'll dunk one for you, off Moon Beach, tomorrow, thereafter, it's a hundred feet or hell. TOM Thanks, that's nice to hear. VOICE Lights out, gentlemen. DISSOLVE TO: (DAY, EXT. (IMAX FORMAT)). THE MORNING PROCESSION DOWN FROM PHU BAI. ONE SHIP OF THE DOZEN OR SO DROPS TO THE SURFACE, SKIMMING ALONG AT THREE OR FOUR FEET. IT PICKS A SAMPAN AND BEGINS AN APPROACH. HUDDLED FISHERMAN, BUT HIS HEAD IS BENT SO HE CAN LOOK TO THE REAR. THE SPEEDING CHOPPER IS A QUARTER MILE AWAY. THE FISHERMAN OBVIOUSLY TENSES, AND REACHES FOR SOME BURLAP IN THE BILGE OF HIS SMALL DUGOUT. THE HELO AT A HUNDRED YARDS. THE FISHERMAN REMOVES THE BURLAP, QUICKLY LIFTING THE OBJECT IT HAS BEEN COVERING. SITS UP. WE ARE STARING INTO THE FACE OF THE PLOWING BOY, IN HIS HANDS, THE JADE HEAD. WITH `SAD SUZANNE' ALMOST ON TOP OF HIM, HE CRIES OUT, TOSSING THE HEAVY STATUE INTO THE AIR. BOY (in Vietnamese) Daddy! THE FIVE POUND STONE SMASHES DIRECTLY THROUGH THE WINDSCREEN AND INTO CHRIS'S FACE. BING FIGHTS THE CONTROLS AND THE BLAST OF WIND. HOLDING THE CYCLIC FOR A MOMENT WITH HIS KNEES, HE REACHES TO AID HIS CO-PILOT, GRABBING HIS HELMET AND PULLING IT. THE JADE HEAD HAS LODGED AT A CRAZY TILT, ADDING TO ITS ALREADY FIENDISH APPEARANCE. HE CLAWS IT FRANTICALLY AWAY, IT CRASHES TO THE DECK, A SPRAY OF ARTERIAL BLOOD, DRIVEN BY THE WIND, BLINDING BING. THE CRAFT DROPS TO THE WATER, SKATES ALONG, THEN BEGINS DISINTEGRATING AS THE ROTORS BEAT EACH OTHER. IN SECONDS IT HAS BROKEN IN HALF, THE FORWARD END SINKING QUICKLY AS THE REAR TWO THIRDS ROLLS UPSIDE DOWN AND BEGINS SINKING. INTERIOR, BING TRYING TO GET FREE, DROWNING, AND FINALLY ONLY THE HIDEOUS GRINNING JADE, GETTING DARKER IN THE DEEPENING WATER. CUT TO: THE SAMPAN. THE BOY (NANG SO) IS DANCING IN HIS DUGOUT, FISTING THE AIR. CUT TO; THE INTERIOR OF THE AFT PORTION OF THE SINKING AIRCRAFT. HANK, BRACED AGAINST THE BULKHEAD JUST AFT OF THE COPILOT'S SEAT, HAS SURVIVED. HE COMES QUICKLY TO LIFE AS THE WATER SURGES INTO THE DOOMED HULK. THE DOOR GUNNER IS OBVIOUSLY DEAD AND THE FRONT OF THE HELO IS GONE. HE GRABS THE RAFT FROM THE OVERHEAD, LOOKS AROUND, SEES HIS DISTINCTIVE AMMO BOX, GRABS IT, PUSHES THROUGH THE DOOR AS THE HELO SINKS. HOLDING ON TO THE FLOATING AMMO BOX, HE PADDLES TO ONE OF `SAD SUZANNES' WHEELS, FLOATING HIGH, AND SECURES THE LANYARD OF THE RAFT TO THE REMAINING STRUT, THEN PULLS THE ROPE TO INFLATE THE DINGY. IT POPS QUICKLY OPEN. WITH THE LAST OF HIS STRENGTH HE HEAVES IN THE AMMO BOX AND CRAWLS ABOARD, HALF PASSING OUT. CUT TO' MEANTIME, THE SURROUNDING FISHERMEN ARE SURGING TOWARD NANG'S SAMPAN, YELLING AND WAVING THEIR PADDLES BETWEEN STROKES. IN JUST MINUTES, DOZENS REACH THE BOY, AND THESE ARE FOLLOWED BY OVER A HUNDRED MORE. NANG SMILES SHYLY AS THE CIRCLING FISHERMEN PAY HOMAGE BY TOSSING WATER IN THE AIR WITH THEIR PADDLES AND ALSO TOSSING SILVERY FISH INTO THE YOUNGSTER'S DORY. THE SCENE BECOMES A HAZE OF FLYING WATER AND SMALL, SILVER FISH SURROUNDING THE BOY'S SMILING FACE. CUT TO; HAND REGAINS ENOUGH STRENGTH TO MOVE FORWARD IN THE RUBBER RAFT AND FREE IT'S PAINTER. HE BEGINS PADDLING. CUT TO: THE CROWD AROUND NANG'S SAMPAN. ALMOST AS ONE THEY NOTE THE MOVEMENT OF THE YELLOW RAFT AND BEGIN HEADING FOR IT. FROM THE MELEE, A SHARP COMMAND VOICE RINGS OUT. VOICE (in Vietnamese, captioned) He no pilot! He friend! He American friend! VOICE (now in English) He American friend! He American friend! THE CHANT IS TAKEN UP BY ALL. IN MOMENTS THEY HAVE REACHED HANK. NANG'S SAMPAN IS SHOVED ALONG SIDE THE RAFT AND THE BOY LEAPS ONTO HANK'S LAP. THE CHANTING CONTINUES AS THE FISHERMEN SPLASH WATER HIGHT IN THE AIR, NOW USING THEIR HATS, ALSO TOSSING THE SMALL SILVER FISH. AGAIN THE MIX OF SUNSTREAKED FLYING WATER AND THE FLASHING COINS OF THE FISH. THE DEMONSTRATION LEAVES THE RAFT COMPLETELY DRY. HANK OPENS THE AMMO BOX, RETRIEVING HIS PORTABLE PLAYER. HE PUTS THE HEADSET ON THE BOY AND PUSHES THE PLAY BUTTON. "C'MON EVERYBODY" HOLD. MUSIC. CHANTING. THE FLASHING SILVER OF THE SUN-STRUCK WATER GRADUALLY PREVAILS, AND WE FADE TO WHITE Writer's comments: Too much of this story is true, but not all of it. Bing was instrumental in saving many lives. He was killed a month after I left Phu Bai. Ground fire on a routine mission. He died quickly, his crew survived. I saw the collective when I visited, but learned about the Coke many years later. Suggested by William Wheeler Anderson III Poetic and idiomatic guru is Marshall Mathers, Eminem. The line: "I'll put a table on you" comes from an episode of "Matlock." I received the Congressional Medal of Honor for activities at Charlie Fox, and, if you believe that, I'll write you another story. Carlos Stone and I were married in 1970, moved to Vermont, and adopted Nang So. If you believe that you might want to read my stories (under various pens) in the Nifty.org archive. Acknowledgements: Nifty.org. for publishing some million words of my work. Since this is a family picture, we'll close with a few photos from various albums. Thank you for watching. Tom Emerson, Dangriga, June, 2003 ... Posted by Thomas@btl.net xxx