The Veteran

by Bobby Michaels

  Chapter Five

  My townhouse was called a townhouse but was actually only a one-story villa. I was glad of this because it allowed Ty full mobility throughout without his having to deal with stairs. The townhouse had an attached garage with a small, walled front yard and a larger walled back yard. I’d had a deck built the year before and had a retractable awning, which covered it. I had a gas grill along with a table and chairs on the deck, which allowed for outdoor dining when the weather was good. Unfortunately, I’d never cooked out there or eaten outside either, having no friends to invite to dinner. I had hopes of doing something to change that when I’d had the deck built but I just never found time to get around to it. To be honest, I hadn’t looked very hard for the time. It was easier to just bury myself in my work and not think.

  Ty slowly made his way around the townhouse, checking out the living room, dining room and kitchen. I showed him the spare bedroom, which had its own bath. He saw the painting above the fireplace. It was an oil that I’d had done of Todd in his “Dress Blue” Marine Corps uniform. It was from a photograph he’d had done before he’d left for Iraq and had given to me.

  Ty was apparently impressed with my place. His comments certainly seemed to indicate that as he stood in front of the fireplace, looking up at the painting of Todd.

  “Social Workers must make a lot more money than I thought, if you can own a place like this.”

  “Uhh…no. This place is thanks to Todd. When he died, I was just living in a small one-bedroom apartment. He’d left his life insurance policy with me as the beneficiary. I used the money as a down payment on this place. That’s why I had the painting done and hung over the fireplace.”

  Ty turned and looked at me.

  “You really loved him, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I did. He’s the only person who knew everything about me. The only person I could ever trust with all of my life.”

  “Yeah. I had a buddy in the Corps like that. If I had a winning lottery ticket for ten million dollars, I know I could have had him hold it for me and never worry.”

  “Todd was like that. So honest and forthright it was almost like he was from another time. A time in history when those were the measure of a man. So what happened to your friend? Did you lose track of each other after you left the Corps?”

  “I didn’t leave. I was thrown out, remember? And I didn’t lose track of him. He died in my arms. I was covered in his blood. I still have dreams about it.”

  Ty looked away from me, turning to stare again at Todd’s painting. I suddenly had this strange feeling go through me. I remembered the small bunches of flowers on Todd’s grave and, just the way Ty talked about his “buddy,” I got the feeling that somehow he was talking about Todd. But, then again, it could just be coincidence. After all, if Ty knew Todd, why had he never said anything? I just figured that I was crazy. I’d wanted so much to someday find someone who knew Todd in the Marine Corps, who could tell me how my brother died. Whether anyone was with him. Whether he’d suffered any pain.

  I realized, finally, that Ty still had those nightmares and this conversation about Todd was not going to do him any good. I decided to change the subject to a topic which was much less morbid. There are usually three subjects men like to talk about; food, sex and sports. I didn’t know anything about sports and I wasn’t about to start talking about sex with Ty so that left food.

  “Are you hungry? I didn’t have any lunch and I need to eat.”

  “Uhh…yeah. They hadn’t served lunch yet when you got me sprung.”

  “I’m sorry about that but I figured you wanted out of there as quickly as possible.”

  “You got that right! Besides, no offense, but your hospital has the worse chow I’ve ever had. Even MREs are better.”

  “What are MREs?”

  “Meals Ready to Eat. They’re what replaced C and K Rations for troops in the field.”

  “Oh. Well I hope my cooking will be better than that.”

  “Trust me, if it don’t come out of a can or frozen in a box, it’s got to be better.”

  “No, I promise that it isn’t out of a can or box.”

  “Then bring it on! I’m starved.”

  I got Ty settled in the kitchen sitting at the table on one chair and his leg propped up on another while I got lunch ready. I made it simple, grilled cheese sandwiches made with sharp cheddar on rye bread, and heated a pot of beef vegetable soup I’d made a few days before. Within fifteen minutes I was putting the food down in front of Ty. Knowing how men eat, I’d made three sandwiches for him, along with a large bowl of soup.

  I watched as he wolfed down the “chow.” I wondered if he even took time to actually taste it, but he evidently had because when he was done he looked at me.

  “I’ve never had chow that good.”

  “Thank you, but surely your mother cooked better than I do.”

  “Didn’t have no mother.”

  “What do you mean, you didn’t have a mother?”

  “Just what I said. Didn’t have no mother. She died when I was born. I was raised by my old man, who used me for a punching bag whenever he got drunk – which was at least once or twice a week. He did that ‘til I was sixteen and I’d grew big enough that one night I beat the crap outta him. He never touched me again. I went into the Corps at seventeen, straight outta high school. He signed the papers for me to go because I told him I’d beat the crap outta him again if he didn’t. I also promised he’d never see or hear from me ever again.”

  I just sat there in horror. I’d heard of stories like this but I’d never met anyone who had lived through this kind of hellish childhood. I now began to understand the deep-seated anger in Ty and the lack of trust. The most awful thing was that the one person who Ty had finally learned to trust had died in his arms.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What for? You didn’t do nothin’.”

  “No, I’m sorry that you had to grow up like that.”

  “Yeah, well it ain’t no big thing. What’s done is done. I’m just glad I got outta there. Only problem is that I planned on spending the rest of my life in the Corps. That got fucked up good. Don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do now.”

  “What were you trained for in the Marines?”

  “To kill.”

  That disconcerted me for a moment. I guess I’d never looked at it as simply as that.

  “No, I mean other than that.”

  Ty barked out a laugh.

  “There weren’t no ‘other than that.’ That’s what I was fuckin’ trained to do. I was Marine Infantry. My job was to kill, either with a rifle, a knife, or my bare hands.”

  “Okay, so was there anything in school that you liked?”

  “Well…there was this one class I had in auto shop. I liked that. Liked workin’ with engines and shit. I wanted to do that in the Marine Corps but even though my test scores were high enough to get that as my MOS there was no need of anyone with that MOS at the time I enlisted.”

  “MOS?”

  “Military Occupational Specialty. In the Marine Corps, my MOS was zero-three-one-one. That’s a rifleman. It would have had to be three-five-two-one to be a mechanic.”

  “So why can’t you train to be a mechanic now?”

  “Because I didn’t have any money when I got out of the Corps and I had no job waiting for me. In fact, because of being thrown out, I couldn’t get a job because I couldn’t explain why I wasn’t in the Corps and I couldn’t produce a clean discharge.”

  “How about we try to change that? What if we can get you into a training program once you’re out of that cast?”

  “I’d still need a job and a place to stay while I was gettin’ trained. That ain’t gonna work.”

  “You’ve got a place to live here, for as long as it takes. And I’m sure I can get you a job at the hospital. It might only be in transportation, taking patients back and forth from their rooms to surgery or medical testing, but it would be a job.”

>   Ty just stared at me for a few moments.

  “Why would you do that for me? You don’t even really know me.”

  “Because, like I told you, you were a Marine just like Todd was. And, what do you mean I don’t know you? I’ve seen you naked. I’ve seen you when you wake up in the morning. I’ve seen as much of you as anybody in the Corps did.”

  Ty grinned sheepishly at that.

  “Yeah, I guess you have. I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t need to say anything. You just need to get well so that you can start making a life for yourself.”

  “Okay. Can I go take a nap now? I’m really tired out after all this.”

  “Of course you can. Do you need any help getting into bed?”

  “Nah. I’m okay.”

  Ty got up, put his crutches under his armpits, and headed toward his bedroom. When he got to the doorway of the kitchen, he stopped and turned back to me.

  “Thanks.”

  Just simply that and then he disappeared through the door.

  Chapter Six

  It was, in so many ways, the strangest period of my life. I went to work and then came home where I would fix dinner for Ty and me. I would do the laundry and we would sit and watch television or a DVD. Three times a week, I would drive Ty to and from the townhouse to the hospital for his physical therapy and once a week I would take him there for his counseling sessions. I had followed Jerry Metzger’s suggestion and made sure Ty was provided counseling to treat what I still believed was PTSD. Luckily, one of the therapists that Jerry had recommended worked at the hospital and was a friend of Kathleen’s. This got Ty the therapy he needed without cost.

  It was almost like we were married, like we were lovers, except for one thing. We still slept not only in separate beds but in separate bedrooms. We weren’t lovers, we weren’t even “fuck-buddies” and I didn’t think that we ever would be. I thought I had resigned myself to never being in an intimate sexual situation with Ty. After all, up until nearly the end of May, the only time I’d seen Ty naked had been that day in the hospital when I’d brought him the new clothes. However, just before Memorial Day, something happened one night that changed everything – at least where I was concerned. It certainly made me hunger for a different type of relationship between us.

  For some reason that night, I couldn’t sleep. I decided that, perhaps, I needed something to relax me. I thought a shot of brandy would be just the thing and got up to get one from the liquor cabinet in the living room. However, when I quietly opened my bedroom door so as not to wake Ty, I saw a sliver of light across the carpeting of the hallway where the door to Ty’s bedroom was slightly open and his light still on.

  At first, I thought he must have gone to sleep with it on but then I heard soft groaning coming from his room. This worried me because I thought he was either in pain or was having another one of his nightmares. I crept slowly down the hall, approaching the door to Ty’s room. The door was open, maybe one or two inches. I looked in and I could see Ty lying on the bed. His broken leg, still in the cast, was propped up on a pillow but the cast was the only thing that covered any of Ty’s naked skin. He was not only nude but his legs were spread and I no longer had to wonder as I had the first time I’d seen him naked just how long his organ would be when erect. There, visible to my eyes, was the most enormous erect cock I’d ever seen in my life. Not that I’d seen that many erect cocks in my life.

  Ty’s cock was not only huge, but it was startling to me in another way. Like most of the men I’d seen, I was circumcised. Ty wasn’t. I watched as he slowly masturbated his cock, sliding the extra skin up and down, covering and uncovering the purplish head of his penis. I noted the head was quite moist and yet it was obvious Ty wasn’t using any lubrication like I was usually forced to use or run the risk of badly chafed and sore skin. The rivulet of pre-cum flowing from the head of Ty’s cock made the skin of his shaft glisten as he stroked his hand up and down with no apparent need of additional artificial lubrication.

  I couldn’t help it. Standing there, my eyes glued to Ty’s stroking of his large, thick, beautiful cock, my own cock was almost immediately as hard as granite in my sleep shorts. Without even thinking, I slipped my hand down inside them and began to stroke my own cock in a simultaneous rhythm with Ty. My eyes were glued to that fold of skin, covering and uncovering the head of Ty’s cock as his hand stroked up and down in increasingly faster strokes.

  I stayed in the darkness of the hall, not allowing the shaft of light from Ty’s room to touch me. Above all, I didn’t want Ty to catch me being a voyeur. It would be as good as just coming out and telling him I was gay and was totally and completely turned on by him. In my mind, this was the only way he and I would ever have sex – at the same time but not together and him not even aware of it.

  As we mutually stroked, my orgasm got closer and closer and it was harder and harder for me to keep silent. It had been quite a while since I’d had any kind of sexual relief since I had been afraid of doing anything with Ty in the house. I don’t know why I was. After all, there was nothing more natural than males of our ages jacking off. I guess I didn’t want Ty to know anything about me sexually at that point. I didn’t want him to ask anything about me because I didn’t know what I was going to answer.

  All of a sudden, there was a loud groan and Ty’s cock began to shoot volley after volley of his hot, thick cum all over his chest and belly. At the same time, my cock deluged my groin and sleep shorts with a heavy load of my own cream. It was only with the greatest of effort that I was able to stay silent and standing. I slowly went back to my bedroom, holding onto the opposite wall for support. There was no problem with me going to sleep after that. In fact, I barely remember getting back into bed.

  However, the next morning, I certainly remembered what happened when I awoke and found my sleep shorts and my pubic hairs glued together by the cum I hadn’t bothered to clean off the night before. I had to actually wear my sleep shorts into the shower so I could get them unstuck from my pubic hair without pulling half of it out. I was, needless to say, somewhat embarrassed but, at the same time, I was calmer than I had been in days. Well…except for my cock, which was rock hard again, just from the remembrance of what I’d seen the night before. I stood there in the shower and stroked off yet another load, leaving me gasping and panting but thoroughly satisfied.

  After dressing, I headed to the kitchen, expecting to make breakfast. Instead, almost from the moment I opened my bedroom door I could smell bacon frying and coffee brewing. Going into the kitchen, I saw Ty standing at the counter, leaning on his crutches and making breakfast. He turned and grinned sheepishly at me.

  “I ain’t as good a cook as you are, but I can at least make breakfast. How do you like your eggs?”

  “Scrambled is fine for me.”

  “The coffee’s ready. Grab yourself a cup and sit down.”

  “To what do I owe all this?”

  “I just figured that I should start helpin’ out around here.”

  “Well, you are injured. I wasn’t expecting you to do anything until we got you back on both feet again.”

  “That may be soon. The doc has been talking about maybe gettin’ me into a smaller cast and making it a walking one so that I don’t need the crutches anymore, I can just use a cane.”

  “That’s great news. Maybe then we can start thinking about getting you into a mechanic’s program.”

  “You really think they’d take somebody like me?”

  “What? Somebody tall and strong? Somebody with a broken leg?”

  I acted as if I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “Don’t be a smart ass.” He turned around from his cooking to fix me with an exasperated stare. “You know what I mean.”

  “You don’t have to tell them about being in the Marines. They’re not even going to ask. It’s not like you’re applying for Veteran Educational Benefits or anything.”

  “You sure?”

&nbs
p; “Ty, even if they ask, you don’t have to tell them. There’s no law that says you have to.”

  “Okay. But are you sure that…well…that it don’t cost a whole lot.”

  “There are grants and financial aid available, not to mention scholarships. Let’s worry about getting you well, first. Then we can worry about school. After all, you’ve already got a job.”

  He looked back at me in shock. “A job? When? Doing what?”

  “I had a talk with Kathleen yesterday. She’s arranged for a job for you as soon as you’re out of that cast and back on your feet. Like I said, it’s in transportation. That’s transporting patients around the hospital. It pays around ten dollars an hour with benefits, and the schedule can be worked around your schooling.”

  He just stood there, leaning on his crutches and staring at me. He opened his mouth several times as if to say something, but nothing came out. Finally, he turned back to the stove and started pulling plates from the cabinet and putting food onto them. I got up to grab the plates and carry them over to the table for him. That’s when I noticed that there were tears running down his cheeks.

  I didn’t say anything. I knew better. It would only embarrass him. Instead I just took the filled plates and headed back to the table, putting one down at his place and then sitting down and putting one in front of me. It took a few minutes, during which I just sat there drinking my coffee and not looking at him. Finally, he turned and made his way over to the table. He’d evidently wiped his eyes because, even though they were red, they were dry.

  “The eggs are really good and the bacon is really crisp,” I said quietly.

  He didn’t answer me so I decided to just keep my mouth shut and wait until he was ready to say something. It didn’t take long.

  “Does she know that I want to be a mechanic?”

  “Yes, I told her. She was actually quite happy about it. She says she’ll finally have an honest mechanic who won’t rip her off to go to.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what she said. I guess it’s common for women to get ripped off when they go to have their cars fixed because they supposedly don’t know anything about vehicles.”