Bad Luck’s Not Always So Bad

Boxcars for Spent Artillery Shells

This is a short fiction piece I wrote some time ago but never submitted for publication. Hope it gives you a pleasant bump. 

#####

BAD LUCK’S NOT ALWAYS SO BAD

     As I applied for summer work at the local ammunition plant after my freshman year at a Texas junior college, I had no expectation they would accept the proverbial ninety-pound weakling…well, one hundred-ten.

     Nonetheless, on Monday, I joined a crew at a railroad siding running alongside a series of warehouses on the sprawling plant reservation. My stomach dropped into my shoes when I saw the other college kids making up the gang. Big football players, hoop stars, brawny men who shaved and everything. You know, broad shoulders, narrow waists, strong jaws, thick unruly hair, and intriguing bulges in denim trousers.

     Steve, a green-eyed lady-killer with curly locks and a swimmer’s physique, disdained sports discussions but held his own whenever talk turned to women. Terry, short and shaped, wrestled for SMU, and if he grappled as good as he looked, he was terrific. Bart was a footballer, a tight end…something I better appreciated after examining his manly butt. Then there was me.

     My foreman, a beefy red-neck named Cooligan, took one look, and his expression said it all. What the hell did they send me this time? Physically immature but not dumb, I knew exactly what they’d sent him…a scrawny queer in a time and place that did not tolerate such creatures.

     Cooligan’s gang unloaded endless streams of spent artillery shells from Korea, a war the entire team avoided by staying in school. Wrestling artillery casings half as big as I was by both weight and linear foot almost did me in, but I managed…barely.

     If the crew fit my definition of hunky, the guy who really sent my pulse racing was the foreman of a nearby warehouse, a tall, lean, dark-haired Mediterranean type named David Amico.

     Within a week, proximity to all of those hot studs was getting to me, and all I could do about it was skin the old pole after I got home, usually with Dave Amico’s hot, masculine image imprinted on the back of my eyelids.

     One day, a boxcar of spent shell casings rolled down the track oozing evil. It happened sometimes; a load came in that smelled like trouble … things like rotting human flesh, undetonated explosives, and lumps of suspicious matter. It made a fellow reluctant to touch the casings even with a thick pair of work gloves. This car, cooked by the intense East Texas heat, trailed a particularly foul odor of putrefaction.

     Cooligan did his Simon Legree thing and soon had us unloading. It was so bad that every half-hour we rotated working inside the car. I completed my turn in the hot-box with running nose, burning eyes, and some serious gagging. As I rushed to get outside I stepped on a loose casing and went over, twisting my ankle and banging my hard-hat against the steel-sided car.
     As you might imagine, safety is a huge thing at an ammo plant, so Cooligan charged inside, bellowing at the top of his lungs. When I saw who was trailing along behind him, I gulped hard and blinked back tears. My idol, Dave Amico gave me a sympathetic grimace.

     Bart unexpectedly came to my defense. “Shell casing was loose and turned under him. Wasn’t his fault, Cooligan.”

     “Can you move your ankle?” Amico asked. Those deep brown eyes almost made me forget my agony. Man, they were beautiful.

     “Yeah.” I rotated the joint gingerly.

     The hunky warehouseman probed my injury, and like my mother’s touch, made it all better. That ankle hurt so good.

     “Don’t think it’s broke, but it’s sprained.” He glanced into my pain-filled, adoring eyes. “You wanta go have it checked out?”

     There was a pregnant pause. The last thing Cooligan wanted was an accident report, and the crew waited to see if the pansy could take it like a man. I gingerly placed some weight on my steel-toed clod-hopper and tested it cautiously.

     “No, I’ll be okay.”

     “Arright!” Cooligan bellowed, pleased with the pantywaist for a change. “Let’s get back to work.”

     Amico grabbed one arm to steady me and Bart took the other. Sandwiched between those two dreamboats, I made it onto the solid concrete loading dock where the warehouse foreman turned to my boss.

     “Clive, he can’t unload shell casings in his condition.” That was the first time I knew Cooligan had a given name. “I’ve got some office work he can do if you’re willing to keep him on your roster.”

     A minute later, with one hand on Dave Amico’s broad shoulder for support, I limped toward Warehouse H-25 in utter painful bliss .

     “Bad luck, man. Bad fucking luck!” Terry, the wrestler, called after us.

     “Yeah,” I agreed. “Rotten luck.”

     My temporary boss sent me to the rest room to remove my boot and wash the stink of that boxcar away. Then I perched on the commode while he plopped down on a stool, lifted my naked foot, and laid it across his manly thigh. I almost forgot the pain as he bathed my swollen ankle in horse liniment. The smelly stuff cooled my flesh while his long fingers heated it right back up again. As he turned to fish for a bandage in an industrial-sized first aid kit, my foot slipped off his thigh and landed in his warm crotch. It was an accident…scout’s honor! He didn’t even flinch. In fact, after he bandaged my ankle, he stood and smiled while I oogled his full basket.

     As I got up and turned to the sink to wash my hands, my hunky boss leaned around me to put the first aid kit on the counter. His thigh warmed the crack of my ass, giving me an instant bone. The length of his body pressing against me set me afire. He shifted so that his fly teased my ass. I wanted to lean back and make contact, but didn’t dare.

     “That butt’s been driving me crazy all summer,” he whispered in a husky baritone. “Has it ever been fucked?”

     I shook my head.

     I watched in the mirror as he flipped the lock on the door. “Now’s as good a time as any to start breaking it in.”

     Excited almost beyond speaking, I managed to squawk, “O-okay.”

     He slipped my trousers down below my knees and strummed my pucker hole like a guitar.

     “W-wow!” I grunted and started pumping my cock.

     “This oughta send you into orbit!” He shoved a finger past my sphincter and laughed aloud when I jumped.

     Dave slowly withdrew his digit. “Kid, if you show up tomorrow, it’s not going to be my finger buried in your ass.”

     I gulped and whispered, “Why wait until tomorrow?”

     He took it as a challenge and rose to the occasion. That hunky guy gave my virgin ass a fucking that left me limping far worse than the twisted ankle I was nursing. That beautiful son of a bitch was one hell of a man!

     What was it Terry had said? “Bad luck, man. Bad fucking luck.”
     Don’t be so sure, my good-looking wrestler. Bad luck’s not always so bad.

#####

Hope you agree that the pantywaist's bad luck was actually a lucky break. Thanks for checking out the site.

Mark

New posts are published at the first of every month at 6:00 a.m.