markwildyr.com,
Post #75
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Wired (from last week) got a bunch of page views and a few
comments. Thanks, guys. Be sure to remember to like.
This week, we have another two-parter. We’ve all had bad luck,
but have you ever had what seemed to be bad luck turn out to be good? Our
protagonist, Billy, is a gay guy in a time and place where that is dangerous. Billy
has some bad luck that could turn good… or disastrous. The time is the early
fifties, and the place is East Texas. While working a summer job between school
years…. Well, Billy tell the story.
*****
BAD LUCK, GOOD LUCK, OR DISASTER
BAD LUCK, GOOD LUCK, OR DISASTER
“Okay, son, report Monday
morning at seven-thirty sharp! And remember, you gotta have steel-toed work
boots.”
The interviewer’s unexpected
announcement generated a mixture of joy and anxiety. When applying for summer
work at a local ammunition plant after my freshman year at college, I had no
expectation they’d accept the proverbial ninety-pound weakling…well,
hundred-ten. Heck, I didn’t even think the army would take me, and they were
sending boys over to Korea by the boatloads.
On Monday, I joined a
crew at a railroad siding running alongside a series of warehouses on the
sprawling munitions reservation. My stomach dropped into my shoes when I saw
the five college kids making up the rest of the gang. They were big football
players, hoop stars, brawny men who shaved
and everything! You know the type, broad shoulders, narrow waists, strong jaws,
thick unruly hair, symmetrical features, and an interesting contour of denims… front
and back.
Steve, a green-eyed
lady-killer with curly locks and a swimmer’s physique, rarely participated in
the endless sports discussions but held his own when 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… a name that always made me
inspect the hip pockets of his Levis. I’d like to be the guy who snapped the
pigskin if Bart was the one with his hands between my legs. The other two, Jim
and Hank, were okay, meaning I wouldn’t have objected if either one checked me
out in the restroom, which they didn’t, of course.
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, the war the entire crew 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 An adjoining warehouse, a tall, lean,
dark-haired Mediterranean type named David Amico. Like Cooligan, Amico was no
college kid; he had to be at least twenty-eight or so, but a well preserved
twenty-eight.
He made me so nervous I
damned near dropped artillery casings all over the place when he was around. Most
of the guys were on a first-name basis and engaged him in easy, casual
conversations, which was something completely beyond my ability; I didn’t know
a blessed thing about football or baseball or guzzling beer or screwing women. In
fact, I didn’t know anything I hadn’t
learned in one of my classes. You know… book smart; street dumb.
Within a week, proximity
to all of those studs was getting to me, and Bobby, the kid next door who occasionally
jerked off with me, was working on his grandfather’s ranch in Wyoming for the
summer. Bobby was at that stage where going only so far wasn’t queer. He didn’t know it yet, but one of these days
he was going to learn what it was really all about. Whether from me or someone
else remained to be seen.
In the meantime, all I
could do was masturbate 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 particular
car, cooked by the intense Texas heat, trailed a particularly foul odor of
putrefaction.
Cooligan did his Simon
Legree thing and soon had us shuffling reluctantly up to start 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. My T-shirt was soaked like I’d showered in it. But old Tight-End Bart,
who’d partnered alongside me in the car, wasn’t in much better shape.
As Terry and Jim
straggled up for their turn in the box, I rushed to get outside as quickly as
possible. Half-blind from sweat and tears, 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.
“Dammit, what happened? Anything
busted?”
When I saw who was
trailing along behind Cooligan, I gulped hard and blinked back tears…my idol,
Dave Amico.
“Shell casing was loose
and turned under him,” Bart unexpectedly came to my defense. “Wasn’t his fault,
Cooligan.”
“Can you move it?” Amico
asked. Those deep brown eyes almost made me forget my agony. Man, they were beautiful.
“Yeah,” I gasped,
rotating the joint gingerly.
The hunky warehouseman
probed my injury, and like my mother’s touch, made it all better. That ankle
hurt so good!
“Naw, I don’t think it’s
broke, but it’s sprained.” He glanced into my pain-filled, adoring eyes. “You
wanna go have it checked out?”
There was a pregnant
pause. Cooligan feared an accident report; the crew waited to see if the pansy
could take it like a man. Amico merely expected an answer. I gingerly placed
some weight on my steel-toed clod-hopper, testing it cautiously.
“I’ll be okay.”
“Arright!” Cooligan roared,
pleased with his pantywaist for a change. “Let’s get back to work!”
Amico grabbed one bicep
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, I limped into Warehouse H-25 with one hand on
Dave Amico’s broad shoulder for support.
“Bad luck, man. Bad
fucking luck!” Terry, the wrestler, called after us.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Rotten
luck.”
*****
Oh, boy! Talk about bad luck. Billy’s
temporarily out of the clutches of Cooligan, but can he contain himself around
his hero Dave Amico? Remember, this is in a dangerous time and place for gays…
something that was very real for those of you not old enough to remember. So
his bad luck putting him in proximity to Dave might turn out to be even worse luck if he gives himself away.
Check in on Thursday the 12th to find out what happens.
Amazon permits you to read a short passage of my novels, Cut Hand and Johnny Two-Guns. I also believe the STARbooks-published River Otter, Echoes of the Flute, and Medicine Hair are still up. I sure would
like to get the final book in the Cut Hand Series, Wastelakapi… Beloved, published, but it’ll take some help from
readers to get Dreamspinner interested.
My contact
information is provided below in case anyone wants to drop me a line:
Website and blog: markwildyr.com
Email: markwildyr@aol.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.wildyr
Twitter: @markwildyr
The
following are buy links for CUT HAND:
And now my mantra (yes, it’s mine, even if I borrowed it
from Don Travis): Keep on reading. Keep
on writing. You have something to say, so say it!
Until next time.
Mark
New posts at 6:00 a.m. on the first and
third Thursdays of each month.
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