Levi 10

Jack Daniels referees the conversation badly. Neil (fucking) Jardine’s trophy filled man cave is a bad trip. Life-worn wood paneling, from some prosperous renovation moment, adds to the gloom. But it is the celebration of death gazing glass eyed everywhere. I was just about to hump this doe, a White Tail explains to a snarling badger. Who mounts a badger on his wall? The whiskey is cheap. Jardine knows it.

Levi thinks Jardine is loving this fresh immersion into Vietnam, and how did Levi forget the man was packing anything more deadly than his M16? Jardine tops up his tumbler. Levi takes his eyes off the montage to consider the piss spill of liquor dribbling over the lip of his glass. My break-up, 2002 maybe, last time I let myself get this drunk. Fuck it, he lets some of Jardine’s whiskey slide down his throat.

“They are not all mine.” Jardine is rooted in a chair only half interested in the slide show. His eyes study Levi, knowing it is easier to recognize the young medic in the lined face confronting him than it is to find his own youth in a mirror.  “I wanted them to know.”

“So you went Ken Burns on your kids.” Levi’s words are slurred, that annoys him. They are two seventy-somethings tranquilizing themselves, old-school. “I mostly let it go. The indifference of the people back home, or maybe it was the thanklessness. They could not wait to forget that war. I guess we are heroes now.”

Levi buried the futility of the war deep until the millennial liberal, PBS diagnosis. How typically human to point fingers at the past mistakes and cynical politics of fear when America should be avoiding the PTS of the present Middle Eastern futilities. Pushing two decades of war and how is it any different? Learn from history's mistakes, they say, but never recognize them when they are happening.

This slideshow is some sort of ritual for Jardine. It steps him back into the nightmare-adventure that shadowes their different after lives. It is Jardine’s harmless alternative to Levi’s trolling underage boys and taking Fourteen to a Tuan-tragic-ending. Nothing but a mistake. “I can’t even go to a football game without wanting to puke at the tributes to service.” Levi finds himself telling this loathsome man.

“Nothing wrong with recognizing courage and sacrifice. We are the shield and hammer.”

“We should have been better.” Levi replies.

“Is that what you tell your grandson? We are not the top species on the planet because we are nice.” Jardine waves vaguely at the witnesses to his lethal impulse hanging from the walls. “I tell my family we were special. We stood our watch, just like the troops are doing now.”

“Every mom thinks their boy is special, I was putting special people in bags every day.” Levi retorts. “It was a cluster fuck.”

“But you did three tours.” Jardine reminds him rancorously.

“Saving lives when I could.” Levi carefully sets the glass down. Levi knows corpsman didn’t spend all their time crawling about under fire. What was that movie, the one on the marquee? Hacksaw Ridge, the name comes back to him because a colleague knew he was a corpsman. What did you think of it? Nothing, Levi thought nothing of it. Mundane day-to-day matters consumed most of his time: ensuring men took their dreaded Dapsone anti-malaria pills, making sure they drank gallons of water and took enough salt pills, clearing out boils that erupted when web gear etched red, salty wounds into sweaty flesh. Levi Fisher had his Bubba-Gump moments, true enough, but not really.  Something on the screen catches his eye. “Stop it!”

“What?”

“Stop the slides, go back.” Fuck Jardine’s memories, but he has to let himself see the picture again. “Just give me the damn remote.” It comes flying at him and he misses the reception. Years of dry hospital presentations, so he is on top of this PowerPoint. Levi manipulates the slide show back to a Rembrandt-worthy shot of the lost patrol. Not The Night Watch, we controlled the day, but the night was theirs. Call it The Day Watch, Levi muses. “I didn’t know you took this.”

Every young face, every pose displayed the unique in-country now of that collection of young men. Levi scans the many faces. Lincoln, Patterson, and King, all found a Vietcong bullet. Patterson slipped away beneath Levi’s helpless hands, just another body bag. Levi tries to recall his connection to that lost man and fails. Lincoln and King made it home. Found their own afters.

He clears his throat hoarsely. “I never talked to them again after I medevac’d them, except King,” Levi admits. “I didn’t know if they lived or died. I did the best I could.” After the Tet Offensive, how many more did I help home? Neil Jardine stares at him, unnoticed.

Neil Jardine breaks his silence. “I was a stupid kid, no doubt about it. All oorah,” Neil snorts.

“At first, I felt I was being done an injustice,” Levi replies. “But it wound up being a blessing. I got to know men at the basic core.”

The betrayed others were scattered in the graves Levi is visiting like a grim connect-the-dots. Nguyen Huu Tuan’s tangerine surrogate-warmth is in tow, cock-captured by his first affair with a man. Levi makes himself look at each youth in the picture. Here grinning, there sharing jokes, one anxious, the next awkward, and so it goes. Safe in his guilt-ridden after, Levi thinks the picture of the sweaty-camouflaged teenagers nailed the essence of each lost man. The oldest was (barely) twenty-one. “Seventy-one,” Levi murmurs to himself, half a century I never deserved because of Tuan.

“So scared, hated the VC, fuck I hated all of them so much. They were all Charlie when you turned your back. Only nineteen, diploma was still wet when I went over.” Neil Jardine echoes Levi’s thought. “I don’t remember when I took that. Where were you, I wonder?”

“We survived.” Levi replies hollowly, as if the picture meant more than it does.

“I think the guy picking at his shirt pocket, must have been looking for a cigarette, he made it home.” Jardine is vague about names now, even his granddaughter’s.

“That is Malcolm King. He is the only one I still know. Lived in New Hampshire, then lost himself in the mountains in Arizona. Went off grid mostly. He was probably reaching for weed. He took one in the leg, took a divot right out, barely registered, he was that stoned.” Levi turns off the painful slide show. The memories are enough. Jardine is slipping badly, that must explain the elementary school PowerPoint. Levi does not need that. Tuan is tightening his hold on Levi like a Boa Constrictor, squeezing the pustule memories out.

Levi was frightened all the time until after Tuan. It was not his place to be scared after that. He never thought of Neil Jardine as scared. It is a new idea. Fucking Jardine stepped into the Nguyen living room spraying 800 rounds per minute. Fucking Jardine was done between the first grunt and the ejaculation. Three down and Tuan wide eyed heartbroken. Levi dragged Tuan into the Huey, never thinking about Jardine at all. It was not until Ian Holland walked out on him, when Tuan’s memory-cyst turned malignant, then Levi knew it was all Fucking Jardine’s fault. If Neil was just a scared kid like everyone else, who was to blame? It had to be Neil’s fault, otherwise it was Levi’s.

“Levi’s boy.” Jardine interrupts Levi’s thoughts. “Yeah, I get that now. It took me years to figure you out. You and the others hitting on the ladies, that fucker always in tow, translating, Levi’s boy, one of the good ones. You easy come, easy go city boys, trying the slant food that little shit ordered, always a new place and a fresh set of girls to make friends with.”

“You were there too.” Levi remembered Neil drinking, taking a spicy bite, but not the slender woman-child offering herself to the corn-fed Nebraska boy.

Neil Jardine grunts an acknowledgement. “To get up in the morning and walk day after day through the paddies, how did we do that?” Neil shifts in his chair. “It was just a show, unbelievable.” Levi stares at him. “That little shit Viet Cong played your faggy, limp wrist cock.” Jardine switches, “We dropped into that plantation to find arms.”

“We didn’t find anything!”

“How would you know? All you were thinking about was that boy.” Jardine heaves himself forward. “Fucking A, we found a stash.”

Levi is wishing Neil Jardine’s memory was worse. He remembers the wounded that day, making Tuan help him, clutching at the boy’s shirt everytime an M16 barked somewhere close. Everything else is a fog. He remembers Tuan’s eyes and the boy’s hard chest. The buffeting downdraft from the blades. Sheltering him on the long ride back.

“He was Viet Cong and you let him in.” Fucking Jardine is stuck on that. “We let him come and go from the barracks, take us down alleys, meet his girls, because he was Levi’s boy.”  As a corpsman, Levi was treated like gold by the Marines with which he served in combat. “When we were in a firefight, we protected you like you wouldn’t believe,” he said. “God, country, the Corps, the corpsman,” Neil twists the words into Levi’s chest.

Jardine leans his bulk back. “Were you queer for him? Did he suck dick better than the hootchy girls?” Jardine sees the hate-anger in Levi’s eyes. Levi looks at his glass.

“You types are all over TV now, respectable. Times have changed, I guess. Now, it’s let the boys be girls and the girls be boys. So I guess you fudge packing some Charlie’s ass in Da Nang is all live and let live.” Jardine looks sideways at Levi. “Did you have one of those partners, get married?”

“No,” Levi whispers. Tuan played you, is still spinning around in his mind. He has had a lifetime of this straight mockery-judgement to avoid-confront. He has known Tuan played him since Da Nang. Tuan’s betrayal is gnawing away at him all the time now. Levi hates Fucking Jardine’s face for talking about it. “You killed his family Neil. I let myself think that did not matter.”

“I did what we came there to do. You let him through the wire, Fisher. You let Charlie through the wire.”

Levi lets the Jack Daniels think for him. If he thinks for himself, then he will hate Tuan for what he did. If he thinks for himself, then Tuan never loved him. Levi hates himself for being the good doctor. Why did he seek a second opinion on the diagnosis? He struggles out of the chair, not wanting to look at Fucking Jardine. “All I know is that you killed his family.”

“Done is done, Fisher, what does it matter? Why did you even come here?”

Levi won’t answer. He came because Chiekezie Adichie set the countdown on Levi’s life with a colleague’s soft finality. All that is left to do is find his way back to Tuan before everything fades. He can’t go back to Mỹ Sơn Temple, 35 miles south of Da Nang, until he makes he makes his peace with the men who died. Fucking Jardine is in his way.

The Luxor Winnebago is cold-dark when Levi stumbles in. He feels Fourteen’s presence down the length of the RV. It is small-town-dead deserted on the street. It is like he and Fucking Jardine are the last men standing in the winter-ghost-world. Fourteen left the tape deck running, Levi can’t say how long. It is looping through the soulful echoes of The Doors. Never a Millenial’s bedtime mix, but mood-right for Tuan’s ghost. Levi drops onto the couch so he can listen to Jim Morrison and Nguyen Huu Tuan.

Levi comes awake as The Doors cycle through “I Looked at You”

♪♫♬ Because it's too late
Too late, too late
Too late, too late ♪♫♬

And we're on our way
♪♫♬  No we can't turn back, babe
Yeah, we're on our way
And we can't turn back, yeah ♪♫♬

It seems to make sense now. Last two men standing, King somewhere in Arizona sulking over his dead son, and Lincoln lost to time, don’t matter. They paid with their wounds. It is Levi and Neil, both sharing the burden of guilt. Each in their own way the killer. Levi sees that.

♪♫♬“Too late, we’re on our way, can’t turn back.”♪♫♬

Who knows what Jim Morrison was thinking? The lyrics speak to Levi. He knows what he has to do. The Beretta Nano answer to Levi’s Tuan-problem lies Fourteen-proof in the bedroom nightstand.

Levi stops beside the warm boy-mound snuggled in against the cold. Tuan should know what I am going to do. Levi considers waking him up. Only, there is a soft smile on the boy’s lips when he sneaks the winter-weight duvet down. Street-lit face at peace, boy-beautiful, Tuan-kissable after a hot monsoon night raining on each other. Innocent dreaming, free from all the waking ugliness. Levi’s fingers lick the light steam between the boy’s parted lips. The Luxor Winnebago now is death-cold.

♪♫♬ Take the highway to the end of the night

End of the night, end of the night

Take a journey to the bright midnight

End of the night, end of the night ♪♫♬

It is another song and Jim Morrison is still in sync with Levi. This long night has to end, so Levi can move on to a Tuan-bright after, whatever that will be. There is the gun lock. Levi keeps the keys one drawer up, not-smart. The lock clatters to the bottom of the drawer, followed by the keys. Levi sighs, he was too young-alive in Da Nang to know he should have done this in 1968. The weight of the years has made him wiser. The tumour yeast-rising in his brain makes him wiser. The clip slides out in an automatic reflex-check. Shiny reassurance, and it snaps back in. Final action, end the night right.

“What are you doing, Levi?”

It’s a soft exhalation through kissable lips. Levi sways slightly beside him. Fourteen is warm, snuggled in, Sweet-Cameron-kissed-groped alive to after possibilities. Levi’s sour breath, gun-oil menace scare him.

“I’m doing it for you.” Levi answers shortly.

“Doing what?” But the John-cold answer of the loaded Beretta Nano is waving in his face, The Doors summarizing his short life: Time to live, time to lie, time to laugh, time to die. “Levi, you don’t have to do this!” Why am I so disposable to these men? It is just a feeling. Fourteen is staring down the 2nd Amendment right to die part.

“He killed them. It does not matter why. What else could you do?” Levi meets Fourteen’s eyes, holding him half lifted from the bed. “I understand now, okay?” Levi’s bleary eyes tear up. “I’m so sorry. You can rest now.” Levi smiles love Fourteen’s way.

There is no rest knowing the loaded gun is in Levi’s drunken hand. “Levi, put it away!” Fourteen is slaved to this man, but somehow, he is not afraid for himself. There is a destructive fragility to the old man. Another fucking Bronco moment, Levi needs help. “Nobody has to die.”

“He does.”

Which is vastly reassuring to hear, because Fourteen cannot dodge a bullet. He does, sounds infinitely more reassuring than you do. Fourteen sort of gets that the you and he of this moment might be what he hopes. Levi is drunk-stupid and needs a steady hand. Fourteen does not have time to understand Levi’s intention. The Beretta Nano has to go. Levi is turning away, intent on taking the deadly tool somewhere he does is, planning to do harm. Fourteen lurches forward and sets his hand on the muzzle.

“Stop Levi, please let me have it.”

Levi turns back to night-shadowed Tuan on the bed, skin-beautiful, glitter-eyed right. Fuck me, he is beautiful. Tuan-bewitched in Da Nang, Levi knew after that Tuan street-walked, street-talked his plan in the tangled pathways of Da Nang. Levi went along. Tuan grabbed his sweat-stained uniform as Levi clutched his cotton shirt. Who knows who was dragging the other to Mỹ Sơn Temple?  Levi lets Fourteen pull the gun gently from his fingers.

“It will be okay.” Fourteen trembles out. The after passion of these heart-ache men overwhelms fourteen. The Beretta Nano slides back in its snug holster. Fourteen lets it drop to his side. “Lie down Levi.” The Doors slides in between them like the chill Nebraska night. Fourteen kneeling now, hand on Levi’s shoulder. Levi breathing softly, still caught in Fucking Jardine’s slide show, the men he betrayed, and Tuan’s lethal intent.

♪♫♬  This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend

♪♫♬  The end
Of our elaborate plans
The end ♪♫♬
Of everything that stands
The end
No safety or surprise
The end
I'll never look into your eyes
Again ♪♫♬

Soft, narcotic-cold lyrics from the after. Levi feels the Tuan-warm strength of Fourteen’s fingers absently caressing his shoulder. There is the young-male-musk, fresh-biting-kiss promise of forgetful bliss just in reach. “You should lie down.” Fourteen urges.

Levi turns his head slightly toward the voice. “Repose-toi un peu, mon amour.” Just rest for awhile, my love, The French is sweet in the tenor, accented voice Levi cannot forget. Tuan’s final words to him.

“Pourquois?” Levi whispers.

“What?”

“Pourquoi devrais-je me reposer?” Why should I rest? In the sweat-drenched afterglow perfection, Levi smiled up at Tuan. He smiles down on Tuan now, loving the young manhood of bare shoulders, hard chest, lean waist, memories of the many takings.

♪♫♬ … The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery ♪♫♬
And he walked on down the hall … ♪♫♬

“Levi, what are you saying?”

“Pourquoi devrais-je me reposer?” Levi repeats. A whisper of Hikari steel sliding through the Tuan-silk of the deceptive curtain between them.

“Levi,” Fourteen begins, then Levi’s hard fingers close around the boy’s throat. Fourteen gasps. Strong adolescent fingers claw at his wrist. One hand straight-arms the boy into the headboard, the other reaches deep-pocket for reassurance.

The old man has a young grip. Fourteen can’t break free from Levi’s sudden after madness. He slides his legs around and brings a foot toward Levi’s chest, hoping to kick him free. He is almost fifteen-strong now, Levi can’t match his muscles, just break the grip. Fourteen freezes as Levi’s Hikari blade comes between them. He is chest-bared, sacrificial for the coming thrust. Freeze frame:

♪♫♬ … Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end ♪♫♬

It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end… ♪♫♬

“Why should I rest? Where do you have to go?” Levi’s voice is an old man’s plea. His hand moves off Fourteen’s bruised throat as the sharp point drops to the held-breath taught-nippled muscle about the boy’s chest. Levi strokes the short bangs above the beautiful, lying eyes. His voice shifts to rage-hard Hikari-certainty. “It was always going to be this way, wasn’t it. You came bound to me, but you were never mine I took care of you, but all you want is to betray me. What are you thinking Tuan?” Levi’s palm cups the beautiful, scheming mind. The only response is the slightest shake of the head. Levi sighs.

“I should have ended it.” Their eyes are locked when the sharp knife breaks the soft skin between Fourteen’s ribs. A ribbon of blood marks the trail of the blade as Levi scrapes his way down away from the easy death of heart or Carotid Artery. “I let you distract me. You used me.”

“Levi, it’s me.” Fourteen starts quiet, eyes torn between the shifting Patrick-after fugue in the old man’s face and the threatening blade touched with his black blood. This is a well hidden Levi he did not think was there. Something at this latest visit broke something loose. “Levi, look at me please.” The Dr. Evil of it all, more cutting.

“I’m much better than I was, Tuan. You watched me staunch the blood. I know bodies better now.” Levi’s free hand caresses down the length of Fourteen, pausing as it has to on the erotic bulge of the boy’s shrunken manhood. “Were you VC, Charlie, or was it just the anger?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. It’s me, Jeremy. I’m not Tuan. Tuan is dead.” There is a rise in Fourteen’s voice and tears of frustration. Jim Morrison is finally on a new track, but Fourteen is still silver-hooped bound hopeless.

Levi’s thumb slides into the warm hollow made for the velvet sack between Fourteen’s narrow thighs. He can feel the life flow as his fingers feel along the boy’s hip. “This is the Femoral artery.” Levi is all bedside manner with Fourteen. “Very big,” He is following the air-sucking, fright-reflex quiver of Fourteen’s tight plates. His hand-mouth artistry has splashed the semen-serving from the boy so many times. Levi knows now, those artistic splatters wrote a message of deceit.

“Stop, Levi.” Fourteen sobs. “It’s just me, Jeremy, Fourteen. Levi, I’m Fourteen!” And he is, just fourteen wanting to be fifteen in his own free after. He tries to shrink away from the awful knife, voice rising octaves in desperation. “I’m Fourteen!”

“Just here,” Levi explains. The knife blade slides along the joint lightly, leaving a red line and parted flesh. Levi stares at the result. “Over so quickly, like going to sleep.” He had the blade at hand. He always did, Da Nang or Boston. Would he have used it on himself after? What would my platoon mates have thought? Levi wonders.

“I’m Fourteen! I’m Fourteen! I’m not Tuan!” The boy is wake-the-neighbourhood-911 screaming at him hysterical. Fourteen-Tuan confusion, Levi’s head is swimming drunk like he never lets himself get. Levi looks at the sobbing boy. His face is falling in and out of some streetlight frame. It is Taun, then Just a frightened boy. Tuan, then trembling-alive Fourteen. Levi closes his eyes and is back in the cold Luxor Winnebago.

No way to change what happened, no matter how many times I think it through. The deadly Hikari blade comes back into his lap. “Fourteen,” Levi begins, not knowing where that will lead him next. He reaches toward the boy’s ruined face. Fourteen flings his arms to block him as the foot finally finds its way to Levi’s chest, and then Levi is tumble-backward to the floor. There is an animal scream as Fourteen flies free.

Fourteen runs across frozen grass along the road. Ten-weeks-tether brings him up short at the corner. He bends over to vomit up Cameron nachos and cheese. He tries to vomit up the knife-wielding-crazy of Levi’s transformation. He is a lost boy. Trash talk with your friends about your need for fourteen-high-school independence. Damn the straight jacketing, out of touch adults! The truth is, Fourteen’s growing skyscraper needs granite bedrock. That was mom and dad, that was John, so it has to be Levi next. Ed Harris Levi, not Full Metal Jacket Dr. Evil-Patrick-crazy Levi. Piss on that. The fear-vomit comes again, and Fourteen is folded over all the fresh hurt.

He checks his bare wrist, like the leash-watch might tell him he is still in the safe zone. The watch-of-life is charging by the bed. All he sees is his blood, fingerpaint ready. Fourteen hugs his naked vulnerability. Telepath, I gotta 911, 911, 911 to the indifferent world. It is cold and Fourteen is mostly naked. Enough of Jim Morrison is echoing in Fourteen to make him want to tempt fate. Keep running down the road, or into some Nebraska ranch-style. Stop playing the damn hand over and over in his head. Time to go all in and call bullshit on Levi’s silver sleight of hand.

Can he handle Levi now? Fourteen shivers cold-fear. He can’t wrap enough body parts around him. Hopping from one foot to the other, he hugs hard. Five paces back toward the uncertainty of the Luxor Winnebago and Fourteen sits down on the curb. He tries to rock it all away as the soles of his feet and ass start to numb.

Levi stands watching Fourteen through the windshield. The boy should keep running, head to a house. When Fourteen sits down, Levi knows what he has to do. He is tired. Levi is Frodo carting the Ring to Mount Doom. He thought Fourteen was his Gollum maybe, wanting to take the ring away, probably fated with falling into the volcano, ending the quest. Levi has planned for the rightness of that. Fourteen is Levi’s not quite virgin sacrifice to Tuan’s betrayal. Someone to share Mỹ Sơn Temple with. A Walmart passport photo, a $200,000 donation to Antigua and Barbuda, and his always discreet lawyer and Ian Holland have furthered that fantasy. You are losing it, Levi. The boy he cut is not twisted Gollum, he is a kid named Jeremy Gates. Levi needs Sam Gamgee, not a twisted wraith betrayer.

Fourteen does not notice Levi until he is standing over him. “Here, kid.” Levi drops his heavy, much needed hoodie and his discarded pants beside him. No shoes, but a definite improvement. He scrambles into them and settles back into his endless rocking. Levi’s voice is soft concern, that helps.

“I just want it to be over.” Fourteen begins. “I want to go home. I don’t want this anymore.” He clutches at the silver necklace. “Just, let me go, let me go, let me go.” His voice trails off, because he is as exhausted as Levi. Levi sits down beside him.

“We dropped into this village. Not really a village, it was a plantation from before the French left. Tuan’s family might have been French and Vietnamese. He looked Vietnamese to me. Anyway, we thought the VC were stashing arms there. There was some resistance where we landed. Everyone was jumpy. Neil Jardine pushed into the house just ahead of me. When I came in, Tuan’s little brother and sister, his mom were down. He was just standing there like his life had ended too.” It is a quiet story. Fourteen rubs his feet, listening.

“I fell for him. He was probably sixteen. I was twenty-one already. I brought him back to the base. I gave some bullshit excuse about getting information out of him. I fell for him hard.” Levi sighs, knowing it is a long story and he has to make it short. “We danced around each other for weeks. Then, he came to me on the beach. It was all new to me, my first time, so shy, so scared.”

Fourteen thinks of the fear-longing that colours his moments with Shane, before he let himself know it would never come to anything. He trusts Levi, forgets he is a captive in the man’s arms. He remembers the wild release of necking with Cameron, just hours before. Levi does not need to paint the picture for him. He keeps his eyes hooded in his hoodie, hands warming in the pocket. He knew some of this already.

“I let him in, so my platoon let him in. He showed us around, I thought he shared his world with me. Looking back, I realized how little he shared. I had no idea where he went, what he did, when he was not with me. I was just happy to slip away and be with him. I could be myself.” Levi paused. “Have you heard of the Tet Offensive? Forty years ago, shook us all up. The Vietnamese hit us hard in 1968. It went on and on. For me, it started in January.”

“Tuan walked into my barracks with a satchel bomb. He had it in his leather book bag. He just walked in smiling like always, I suppose, and set it off.” There is a dead quality to Levi’s voice.

“Where were you?” Fourteen asks.

“I had rented this hotel room for him. We always met there.” Unless they were somewhere else, like Mỹ Sơn Temple, or a secluded beach. “I had spent the night with him, and then half of the next day.” Levi finds a laugh. I was young back then. “I thought he had just gone out to bring us some tea. I thought he would be right back. Instead, he went and blew himself up.” Levi sobbed a little.

“All these dead people you keep driving to.”

“He killed them all. They trusted him too.” Levi has to stop for a minute.

“Except for Neil Jardine and you.” Fourteen breaks the silence.

“Except for the man who killed his family, and me.” Levi sighs again. “I was so moonstruck by him. I never thought about it. Neither did Neil Jardine, now that I say it. What a stupid idiot I was. What was I thinking? We killed his family, and I thought it did not matter to him?” Levi let that sink in. “He took his time, must have found some Viet Cong friends, and took his revenge.”

“I wonder what he thought when he didn’t see Jardine in the room.” Fourteen added.

“To do a thing like that, I think your mind goes somewhere ahead of your body. Maybe he never noticed.”

Fourteen imagines himself following Nguyen Huu Tuan’s footsteps to that last moment. He has been desperate enough to set his collar bomb off in Levi’s passionate embrace. He can actually imagine it, but Fourteen wants to live. “Could he have left the bomb and escaped? Maybe he is not dead.”

“They found his body. I watched it burn.” Levi pauses, “There were years I pretended to myself that he got away, that we would be together again.” Levi shakes his head. “He is dead.” His beautiful, beautiful first boy. “Sometimes, you need to be with the people you love. I have to live with the fact that he used me. I have to be with him again.”

There is a silence between them that should have been filled by walking back to the RV. The assault on the bed is still between them. Trust is broken. Fourteen cannot bring himself to go back to the latest before. Levi nudges him.

“Jeremy, you keep this from now on.” Levi holds out the Beretta Nano. When Fourteen does not accept it, he drops it into the boy’s lap. “I left the gunlock key in the lock. You can decide where you want to keep it.” Levi imagines the moment might come when Fourteen will want to use it on Levi. He is too tired to care. He wants Mỹ Sơn Temple, but if Fourteen decides it must be sooner, that will be the way it is. “Take my knife too.” He holds out the clasp knife. Fourteen stirs. He takes the blade and holds it with Levi’s gun in one hand.

“I still need you. I can’t let you go Jeremy. I need Fourteen for a while longer. Someone to help get me there.” Levi does not try to apologize. He does what he has to do. With or without the teenage boy, he is going to make it to Vietnam. There can be no FBI chase, no last minute extradition to face the consequences.

Levi listens to Fourteen panicked panting subside beside him. His interrogation scared the boy and scared himself. The street is sleeping, windless, cold is seeping into the palsy Adrenalin-drained, Whisky-saturated muscles. On such a night, he should be gazing out at the twinkling Mystic River. No twinkling by the underage twink along this unimaginative street of dormant sameness. Jardine’s liquor is downshifting Levi’s Tuan-lost passion to a lethargic swim into the mind tingling currents of sedation. It has been an epic, cathartic drunk.

Fourteen says nothing. He simply stands up, and begins limping back to the Luxor Winnebago now of this never-ending carnival midway. Levi’s Beretta Nano is heavy in his hands. It lacks the nineteenth century, point-and-shoot simplicity of John’s Saturday Night Special. Is there a safety? I have to pull the thingy back to put a bullet in the chamber, I think. What would Levi do if I tried to shoot him right now? Would he just stand there and let me? All this in the heartbeat of one numb foot leaving the glacier pavement and falling a pace closer to the Winnebago. Cold feet, warm heart, Fourteen is worried about Levi.

Levi stumbles-drifts along beside him. His John-hard rock is suddenly cracked by this pay-respect-to-the-living disaster. The RV will offer only the illusion of warmth behind its thin walls, but it is a relief to help the old man up the (missed a step) stairs. Fourteen has played the palliative-care nurse-grandson, lied the story across America. He lives it now, so take Levi’s Pea Jacket off. “Did you even take your medicine tonight?” He scolds gently.

The sour-bad-breath liquor smell is not a Gates Family tradition, nor is putting drunks to bed. Levi stops their progress down the hall to the bedroom. Fourteen near fifteen, still has to look up at Levi. The man’s hand slides to his neck and fingers push the hoodie off his face. It is a kiss-coming moment. It is a you like kissing, but not with me pregnant pause. Fourteen feels the shift his way. Tonight, he is in control, so he won’t give an inch. “You need to lie down. It’s okay, just rest.”

Shoes off, tucked beneath the blankets, Levi lies eyes open. Fourteen stands beside him, working through the next steps. He needs to put this catastrophic visit behind them. Fourteen wants to get back to the road routine. He needs the John, Patrick, and Fourteen adventuring to Hershey, Pennsylvania comprehensible motion. Sure there was Patrick’s haunted-hurtful after dance, but also John’s I-have-your back, on your back now dependability. Fourteen needs a thing. Right now, his thing is getting Levi Fisher back to Tuan. That at least seems comprehensible.

The Beretta Nano goes beneath his modest pile of Target-Walmart wardrobe. The key to the trigger lock and the wicked-sharp blade get tucked into the Ziplock bag behind the microwave. Levi has rolled over. Fourteen checks him, and then works through next steps. Fourteen cannot sleep. The prairie cold has taken a deep bite out of him. He measures the free space in the bed and shakes his head.

Fourteen knows what Shane would do. Shane would set his jaw and door-pound Cameron’s mom awake, spill everything, call a bomb squad. Remy and Greyson Gates would agree with Shane. Fourteen knows what John would do. John would shoot Levi and drive away. Patrick would run mindless. Patrick would only stop long enough to brain-fuck the next Jeremy Gates, then keep on running.

Fourteen turns slowly around, letting the familiar RV speak to him. Jeremy Gates should go for help, but he is Fourteen. Fourteen is Levi Fisher’s boy. Stripped hot-naked on the bed, he is lip-licking, breath-catching ready for the long hard dildo shaft to start the next midway ride to climax. Fourteen is cock-ready for a man and horny enough to dry hump Cameron’s erection on a got-to-go-to-bed school night (it came close. So tell the truth, they were doing that). Fourteen is not Jeremy Gates, listen-to-your-parents shy these days. Fourteen is suck my dick, fuck me hard, queer. His mouth twitches sideways…. Time to go, go, go.

He glances back at Levi to see if he has noticed the heavy engine turning over. The dashboard has been a curious study for some time. Behind the wheel, it makes less sense. You can do this! He reminds himself. The wide street does not look as wide from this angle. He only needs to make it to the highway. Time to shake the Jardine dust off our feet. He could shift it into gear, but something makes him look for Cameron.

Cameron was out the door as soon as the long RV’s running lights turn on. He is barefoot-boxers intent on doing, something…. Something works. Door opens, and Jeremy is stepping down, coming to him barefoot, jeans, and heavy hoodie. They almost hug each other. “I heard yelling. I saw you running away. I saw your grandfather follow you. Are you okay?”

So not Barry Gordon ditched in the night. Here's the first boy I ever kissed. Fourteen smiles the lies, because Cameron came (well almost, probably in the bathroom after) and the truth remains mind-blowing. “I guess it got ugly with his war buddy.” Fourteen fabricates, “Levi drank too much. He never does. That was the first time I ever saw him like that. He probably missed his medication. He can be a handful when that happens.”

Cameron steps closer. “I worry about you. If he is like that, you should not be on the road with him.” Cameron has broken trust, and he hesitates because he knows this. “I told my mom about it. Your losing your family. Your grandfather really sick.”

“Our kissing?” Fourteen grins.

“Not that.” Cameron grins, and then remembers he is worried. “You are going. He should wait till morning if he is drunk.”

“I’m driving.”

“No shit!”

“Yes shit!”

Fourteen is kissed-a-boy cocky now. He makes a move on Cameron, drawing skin-warmth to fleece-warmth, lip to lip practiced velvet glide. It is so hard (quickly true) to keep from letting a hand slide right down Cameron’s ass. He could drag Cameron’s shivering male hardness onto the spiky lawn and suck cock. Maybe, find out what it felt like to take a boy. That would be Fourteen-speed. Cameron is Jeremy Gates before not ready. Sigh, “I have to go.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Cameron steps back.

“Yes,” he thinks it is true. “I will be fine.”

They should exchange addresses. They should not exchange addresses. Fourteen has not even talked to Makayla yet. Talking to Cameron before his after-your-birthday-after is not a good plan. Cameron is Nebraska, Fourteen is the highway, and Jeremy Gates is Ohio. It was just a beautiful moment.

Cameron wants to say more, but he knows he won’t. Browser history helps and Cameron-kissed-awake to the possibilities wants to friend Facebook Jeremy (not Euller) Gates. Message-in-a-bottle received, but not understood: I’m okay, don’t worry, love you. Mysteries, to untangle, but Jeremy is just passing through.

They should exchange addresses, but it is not necessary. Jeremy is captured on his phone, verified email address ready for a message. John, and Levi can attest, tangerine is hard to forget. Not Patrick, he has fever-forgotten Fourteen in his next before-after cycle of torment. John had his Saturday Night Special ready for someone, but he remembers Fourteen.

No lawn action for the boys. Fourteen has hard regrets about that. Just a last kiss to the cute boy-in-every-port now. No romantic fantasy about some forever after. He will be Fourteen-practical, and he has a Luxor Winnebago and a shattered old man to pilot down Interstate 80, past Hershey (not the chocolate one), to… somewhere.