This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.

Farewell, Uncle Ho

by Dennis Milholland

questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu

Chapter 36 (Sun., Jan. 15)

I was on my third cigarette, when the faint knock forced its way into my consciousness. Since I hadn't appeared for reveille, I guessed someone was looking for me. I got up and opened the door. "You ready for breakfast?" Gerry came into the room, saw the rolled up mattress and folded bedding on what had been Sean's bunk. He took the cigarette out of my hand and tossed it into the butt can. "Will you give me a chance, to help you forget him?"

"You're on." I pulled him close to me and took in his scent. "What did you have in mind?"

"Well, putting in for a change of MOS, for a start." I held him out at arm's length. He smiled broadly. "Was giving it some thought, and I decided to fuck family tradition. We're not in Prussia, and this isn't World War I." He paused. "And I'm not my mother's father or brothers."

"I am impressed, I have to say." I hugged him again, and I felt his lips on my neck. "What do you think the Matriarch will say?"

He giggled naughtily. "She'll just have to fucking live with it, won't she?"

***

On the way to the mess hall for breakfast, Morton and Pierson caught up with us. Morton walked alongside Gerry for awhile, before he said anything. And when he did, his voice was shaky. "Look, Gerry, about what happened…"

"Forget it." Gerry took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "You can't help your feelings anymore than I can help how I am."

Morton looked angered. "Did he talk to you, Ben?" I nodded my head. "And?"

"And what, Morton?" My voice was telling everybody that this was not the time and place to be discussing anything this personal.

"Are you going to be his buddy?" He sounded borderline aggressive.

"I am." I told him and ended with an aggressive: "So?"

Pierson snickered. "Just don't bend over in the showers."

He squeaked when I grabbed him by the top of his field jacket. "I will not tolerate remarks like that about anyone." I pulled him toward me and lifted him a bit. "And particularly not about Private Helmstedter. As of now, he is under my protection. Do you read me?" Before I dropped him, he'd nodded.

Then I turned my attention to Morton. "Your best friend entrusted you with some very personal information. You have betrayed that trust." I got into his face and growled through clenched teeth. "You are a traitor." Then so only he could hear me. "Never, I repeat, never talk to anyone about this ever again."

Both Morton and Pierson looked scared as they hurried toward the mess hall ahead of us, looking occasionally over their shoulders. Gerry looked worse for wear as he pulled me to the side. His whisper was unsteady. "Do you really mean that?"

"I do, or I wouldn't have said it." I was just getting my teeth unclenched; I had to exercise my jaw.

"Am I reading too much into this?" His expressive eyes looked troubled, as if many years of fear from hiding himself from the world were surfacing, and he didn't know how to control it.

"If you're asking, if I promise to love, honor and protect you, the answer is: 'I do'."

The look Gerry gave me at that moment, when he realized I'd just repeated what sounded like wedding vows before dawn on this dirty cinder road, amongst dilapidated and partially disused wooden barracks, early on this Sunday morning at Fort Dix, New Jersey, made my world, at least, light up. And when he looked stunned and nodded and then enthusiastically said that he did, too, we knew that there had been a major shift in our lives. Now, all we had to do was to convince the Army not to tear us apart.

***

On our way back to the barracks from the mess hall, Pierson and Morton caught up with us. Pierson started out with a lame excuse to say that he was sorry, when I interrupted him. "Do you have any idea how much trouble you could cause with continually bringing something up that is none of your fucking concern?"

Again, he looked frightened as he shook his head. And I intended to keep him in a constant state of fear, like his kind always tried to do to my kind.

"Just because you think something is funny," I snarled in a low voice. "like warning people not to bend over in the shower, could send someone to prison for about five years, if the wrong people hear about it." I stopped and grabbed his field jacket, like I had before. "And if the man standing next to me goes to prison, because you can't keep your fucking mouth shut, I promise you that you won't live long enough to see him go in."

From the smell of things, Pierson just crapped himself. So, Morton took up the fight for his buddy. "I'm warning you--"

"--fuck you." I growled then laughed at him. "Let me set things straight. You're way too much of a bourgeois reactionary to pull off the Harlem-thug shtick, so can it. I, on the other hand, grew up in Chinatown and knew how to take care of myself in a street fight with a switchblade before I started school."

I was still staring him down, as Helmstedter tugged on my sleeve, and we left them standing in the roadway. Since I was pleased with myself for having instilled fear into would-be heterosexual bullies, I pulled out an after-breakfast cigarette, but remembered that I'd given Haruki his lighter back and had forgotten my matches in the room. I took the cigarette out of my mouth. "Aw, Fuck!"

Gerry pulled something out of his field-jacket's pocket. "Forget these?"

I laughed. "Good that I have you to take care of me." I took the matches and lit the cigarette. I handed them back to Gerry. "You take care of these. I'll probably lose them."

He put them back into his pocket. "Did you really know how to use a switchblade, when you were a kid?"

I laughed and bumped shoulders with Gerry as we walked. "Of course, not. But they don't know it. Besides, I've put up with their kind of shit for far too long."

"What kind of shit?" His face looked rosy in the morning sun. His smile was brilliant.

"You know," I puffed on the cigarette without really inhaling. "if everything else fails, they think, let's get the fagots, 'cause they won't defend themselves." I had to remind myself to whisper. "Besides, Pierson, the pussy who just shit himself, when I grabbed him, was the one on the first day who wanted to hear Sean's war stories."

"Yeah, I remember that." Gerry laughed out loud. "Hope Morton has fun being his buddy."

"Hope Morton has enough diapers." I looked at Gerry and grinned; he laughed his contagious laugh, and we had to stop by the side of the road and lean up against a barracks building before we fell over from going limp.

***

We were still giggling when we got back to our barracks. First Sergeant was on the prowl and apparently looking for Sean. His face lighted up, as he saw Gerry and me coming through the door to the bay. "Y'ain't seen the Specialist have you?"

"Hey, Top," I yelled down the bay. "yeah, we did about a quarter to five this morning. He took off with his belongings; didn't say where he was headed to, though."

"Probably getting ready for out-processing." First Sergeant mumbled to himself. "Okay, and you go ahead and stay in that room up there, Loughery. Oh, and before I forget it, they want to see you tomorrow first thing after breakfast, over at Personnel. Some shit about you not being a real American. Where were you born?"

"Lower Manhattan." I laughed. "But yeah, I can see their point." Now, First Sergeant and Gerry joined in chuckling.

"And you might as well go with him, Helmstedter." First Sergeant chuckled again. "Just to make sure he doesn't get lost." Then we looked at him; he looked at us. "You can go. Enjoy your Sunday."

"Thanks, Top, you too." By the look he was giving us, he obviously didn't know why we were still there, looking at him. "Uh, Top, you're standing in front of Helmstedter's locker."

"Damn, seems I'm always getting' in somebody's way." He moved to the center aisle. "But that's gonna be different in nine weeks." Helmstedter got his wallet out of the locker.

"What's in nine weeks?" I thought maybe he was going to rotate duty stations.

"I'm retiring." His face brightened. "Gonna be one good-for-nothin', salt-water-fishin', lazy-ass civilian, takin' it easy on Puget Sound."

"Trade ya, Top." Helmstedter said in jest.

"Just between you, me and the woodwork," Top's face turned serious. "the way things are going over in Nam, if I was you, I'd ditch that 11Bravo bullshit."

"Yeah," Gerry glanced at me. "Loughery's been trying to talk me into something like Legal Clerk."

"Damn," First Sergeant nodded approval. "that's the best advice I've heard all morning." Then he gave us the broadest smile, despite the long scar on his face. "You stick by your buddy, ya hear? He'll keep you out of a world of hurt."

"I intend to, First Sergeant." Gerry touched the brim of his green ball cap, "See ya." and we left the building. When we got out of earshot, he wondered: "You think he knows?"

"Wouldn't surprise me." Then I added: "But don't think for a minute that you can talk to him about it. High-ranking NCOs are never your friends."

"Isn't that Haruki guy an E-7?" Gerry was smiling, but I wasn't.

"And he's not my friend."

***

When the nice lady at the tobacconist's stand at the main PX sold me the Zippo, she wanted to know if I would like to have it engraved. When I told her that I didn't, she said that it was included in the price. I smiled and shook my head. "Thanks, all the same."

Gerry seemed surprised. "Why not?"

"I'll have it done in Vietnam." was my maudlin reply.

He stopped by grabbing my sleeve. "What makes you so fucking sure that you're going to Nam."

"Well, it sure as Fuck won't be France, since de Gaulle withdrew from NATO a couple of months ago and kicked out all the American troops." That was finger number one, and I presented finger number two. "Other than a part of Belgium and Louisiana, the only place they speak French, as far as the US Army is concerned, is the Republic of Vietnam, one-time French Indochina." That took care of finger number two, and finger number three was the biggie. "And the second most widely spoken language in the cities of Vietnam is Cantonese. So, do you think that the US Army is stupid enough to send me to Baumholder, Germany."

Gerry laughed. "Probably."

I shook my head. "I wouldn't put it past them, either." I laughed. "How do you say horse shit in German?"

"Pferdescheisse." he giggled.

"Think I'll give that a pass, for the time being." I laughed and pulled him along.

"What's horse shit in Albanian?" He was on the verge of hilarity.

"How the Fuck should I know?" was my honest reply.

"I knew it." His laughter was no longer containable. "How did you get that score on the test?"

"I'll tell you the whole story sometime before I tuck you in." I had to tug on his sleeve again. "Let's go to the commissary."

"Why?" Gerry was still laughing but confused, since the commissary was basically for food. "What are you about to pull off, now?"

"We need some C-rations. And the carton of cigarettes are cheaper than at the PX."

"And why do we need C-rations?" Luckily we were out of the building and walking across the still-empty parking lot toward the commissary.

My whisper wasn't very loud, but he still shushed me when I told him: "So I can suck your dick, eat and fuck your ass and not bother about going to the mess hall until breakfast tomorrow."