Farewell Uncle Ho 74
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.
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Farewell, Uncle Ho
by Dennis Milholland
questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu
Chapter 74 (Sun., Apr. 30)
After we left Earl, with some things to think about, Gerry and I returned to our cottage, took a quick shower and went back to bed. At some point before noon, I heard Gerry's stomach growl. He hadn't been awake, until his digestive tract started making noises. I looked at him and grinned, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. Someone had been watching us through the window.
"I think we had an admirer." I whispered and motioned with my head toward the window. But since it was daytime, even though foggy, I wasn't too concerned.
"Was probably Earl." Gerry wiped sleep out of his eyes. "He putters around a lot." His kiss to my mouth was sensuous and sloppy. "Or June is out, indulging her darkest secrets." His mischievous grin and lewd, deep laugh were pretty good indicators of his state of mind.
I pushed him from his side onto his back, then straddled his abdomen. My tongue searched for his with the intention of making the kiss last. The tingly sensation of a couple of his fingers tracing the rim of my hole made me tremble. My cock was trying its best to draw attention to itself by throbbing and leaking viscous liquid.
When I turned around to feed Gerry my cock and suck on his, I saw it again. All I could tell for sure was that it wasn't June. It was a man, wearing an olive-drab jungle hat.
A chill went through my spine and limpness through my dick, since it was probably either our landlord, the retired colonel, or CID, active trouble makers. One of the things impressed upon us during basic training, aside from Article 15, was Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the so-called 'Butt-Fuck' article. 'Any person found guilty of sodomy (defined as, unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense. that is, fucking your Buddy, your dog, your neighbor's ass, your neighbor's wife's ass or Mary's little lamb) shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.', which was quite literally quintessential martial law. This was possibly the first time that I realized that I was no longer a civilian and no longer had any real rights. It, of course, also became stunningly clear why the United States originally supported the Catholic fascist dictatorship of Diem, in South Vietnam and was now supporting the dictatorship of the Catholic fascist, Thieu. This article could have been drawn up by the fucking Pope.
"What's wrong?" Gerry was extremely concerned, since my dick had shriveled, and my sweat was cold, producing shivers. He tried to warm me by hugging and rubbing.
"The guy at the window was wearing a uniform hat." My voice was quiet and insecure.
"So?" He tried to subdue his snickers.
"So, if whoever it was reports us we would probably get court-martialed." I was trying not to state the obvious, but there was no way around it.
He broke out laughing. "Aren't you the one who admitted to the CID that you're Queer, while you were hooked up to a lie detector?" Then he became slightly more pensive. "If worst comes to worst, we'll admit that we're lovers and get a discharge and go back to Europe."
"I don't think that it usually works that way." I was becoming paranoid, now that I was giving it some thought. "If we'd been drafted and were still on Universal Service status, they would have probably have been willing to give us a discharge." I got out of bed to close the curtains and make us something to eat. "But I extended and you enlisted, making us Regular Army and possibly guilty of a fraudulent enlistment." I was trying not to yell from the kitchen. And, which we hadn't anticipated, there was a knock on the door.
***
Having thrown on my jogging pants, I opened the door, and nearly passed out for joy. "God damn, Drill Sergeant, what the Fuck are you doing here?" And I saw Ju-Long and Cam getting out of the red Wagoneer, waving. The Bandit was already on his way to greet Gerry and me.
"You think we can get a cabin for a week?" Ju-Long yelled. I pointed at Earl coming out of the house, still munching on his lunchtime sandwich.
"I don't believe it." June was running up from the station, where she'd been minding the shop, while Earl had lunch.
"My god!" Ju-Long started moving toward her. "June Masterson! What a small world!"
June hugged Ju-Long and turned to Cam. "I'll bet you don't remember me, do you?"
Cam looked at her, thought for a moment, and then, with a broad grin, said: "You're that nice lady from the airplane."
She scooped him up and squeezed him to her with tears rolling down her cheeks. "You do remember, and now you even speak English." She laughed through her tears, setting him down onto the raked gravel driveway. "It seems like just yesterday." June blotted her eyes with a lace hanky, that she'd pulled from who knew where.
Ju-Long turned to the rest of us. "The evacuation of dependents from Saigon started on Monday, February 8, '65, and our manifest was for the 11th aboard a Pan Am charter to Oakland."
"Yeah, I can remember taking June out to Tan Son Nhut, and how everyone was nervous." Earl related. "They'd spread the evacuation of the dependents out over the entire week, so the Vietnamese wouldn't panic." He glanced at me and winked. "Not that they weren't glad to see us leave."
"Cam and I got off in Hawaii, and June didn't want to let him go." Ju-Long recalled.
She smiled at Cam, who took her hand. "He was the best-behaved child, I'd ever known."
"And he still is." Gordon said proudly. "We really won the lottery with him."
I don't think that Gordon meant to disclose all to June and Earl, but what was said was said. And since both Gordon and Ju-Long were wearing their field jackets, there was no denying that they were still military.
Anyway, June must have known that Ju-Long was Special Forces, since they'd sat next to each other on the fourteen-hour flight from Saigon to Honolulu. But he probably hadn't told her about Cammy's other dad.
"Did I hear you correctly," Earl said calmly. "that you want to rent a cottage for a week?" And when everyone let out the breath they'd been holding, I noticed that Earl was wearing an olive-drab jungle boonie.
***
Gordon and Gerry had gone off to the commissary at Fort Harrison before it closed at five to get the steaks, ribs and baking potatoes for our barbeque dinner. When he asked me if he could drive the Mustang, I noticed that he actually had a hard-on in his jeans. He was sincerely a dedicated motorist.
June was playing an educational game with Cam and the Bandit in our living room, and I was helping Ju-Long settle their stuff into the cottage next to ours.
"He's a retired bird colonel?" Ju-Long wanted to know, while placing their folded clothes into the small closet.
"Yeah, commissioned in the Signal Corps." I laughed. "Better known as the Buddy Fuckers, if I'm not mistaken. Of course, he doesn't talk about it."
"Speaking of talking about it." Ju-Long laughed and shook out a pair of woolen uniform trousers. "Gordon can't keep his mouth shut about Cam and me." He chuckled and looked at me. "It's good that he only has a little over two months left, then we'll both be out."
"Is that what you're doing here?" I handed him a stack of kaki dress shirts.
He nodded. "We both have shit loads to clear up with the finance center. They owe me a bunch of back pay, disputed combat pay, housing allowance…" He grabbed me into a hug. "A propos housing allowance, almost forgot to thank you for the house."
He let me go, when there was a knock at the semi-opened door. "Can I come in." Earl stuck his head through the entrance.
"If you don't mind, if I take my leg off in your presence." Ju-Long chuckled and sat down on the nearer of the two overstuffed chairs.
Earl looked a little shocked at the idea. And he blushed, a little embarrassed, that he hadn't taken Ju-Long seriously, when he hitched up the leg of his trousers and unbuckled his prosthesis. "Whoa, that looks sore." Earl nodded at the stump. "I got some calamine lotion, if you need it."
"Thanks, Earl." Ju-Long massaged his leg with an alcohol solution, which smelled more like peppermint vodka than medicine. "But I've got everything I need, right here."
"What happened?" Earl took a seat on a chair at the table.
"Victor Charlie didn't want me to win their hearts and minds." Ju-Long placed the bottle of alcohol solution onto the table. "So, he pitched a frag under my jeep."
"Were you a grunt?" Earl wondered.
"Nope." Ju-Long sounded okay with talking about it. "I was with Detachment B-52, 5th Special Forces Group. My last base was Nha Trang."
"And what did you do?" Earl was still eyeing the angry looking leg.
"Sorry, Colonel, can't talk. Ask me again in fifty years." Their eyes met, and both chuckled the smirky chuckle of evasiveness.
***
Earl had come looking for me to enlist my help in moving the redwood picnic table into the car port nearest the oil-drum barbeque, which had been blazing away but was starting to die down. The pleasant smell of hickory smoke was now clearly discernible, and the heat coming off the oil-drum felt good, since the outside temperature had started to drop to somewhere in the mid-sixties.
"Uh," The classic start to discussing a sensitive subject, came from Earl. "can we talk?"
"Of course." I looked at him; he wasn't willing to look me in the eye. "And there's nothing to be embarrassed about." I reassured him, since he probably knew that I'd seen him at the window.
He sat down on one of the long benches, attached to the picnic table. I took a seat across from him and offered him a cigarette. He nodded his appreciation. "You know, when I was in Nam, I had a really good buddy."
"And what happened to him?" I was guessing that he either got killed in action or went back to his wife and broke off contact. Since field-grade officers rarely got killed, I was betting on the latter.
"Um, when we came back from Nam..." He was staring at the table top so intensely, had he had any special powers of vision like Superman, we'd be in flames by now.
To ease his tension, I sort of filled in the blank. "He went back to his wife and told you to fuck off. Something along the lines that he really isn't 'like that' and that you shouldn't try to see him anymore."
He looked at me, as if I'd just grown horns. "Are all Orientals clairvoyant? Is that why the Viet Cong are winning?"
He laughed, and I field stripped my cigarette. "No, it's just that I've heard the story, before." I smiled sympathetically and talked in detail about Bat and his Army buddy, Shai, about how Shai wanted to keep up appearances, and how he had broken up with Bat, rather than move in, when Bat's wife left.
"June won't leave me." He said with certainty as he got up and flipped his cigarette into the fire.
"That would definitely be great." I followed him over to the barbeque, giving it some thought. "But how can you be so sure?"
"She's my third cousin on my dad's side." He smiled and squeezed my shoulder for reassurance that the question had been alright. "We grew up together and have been good friends all our lives. And she's known about my preferences since we were kids in Poughkeepsie." He poured on some charcoal to burn with the hickory embers. "I married her because she has a rare blood condition that very occasionally needs considerable medical attention, and the Army covers her expenses." He stirred the fire. "Since she can't have kids, she's okay with the setup. Anyway, to get all that fun, travel, and adventure, she didn't have to change her name." He chuckled at his choice of words.