The Artists - 19. Unexpected

The constant, angry thrum of Hueys filled the jungle with an eerie din as automatic weapons chattered among the trees. Eric felt a strange burning in his hand and looking—half expecting to see a wasp injecting its venom—he saw nothing below his elbow. The shockwave of a 105 exploding somewhere close by swept over him as he looked up into the medic’s pale blue eyes.

“You’re doin’ okay, lieutenant,” the boy said. “You saved us.”

“For bravery in the face of an overpowering force” the citation began, but it didn’t restore the forearm, wrist, hand, and fingers, or take away the phantom pain.

He wanted to jump out of the Huey on the flight back to the fire base, but with a round through his right femur and a missing arm he didn’t have the strength to get up off the stretcher let alone throw himself out into eternity. He thought it ironic that he already had a Purple Heart for shrapnel received forty-five days after he arrived in-country and now, forty-five days short of his return, he was wounded again.

He just wanted the noise of the helicopter to stop. He’d give anything for quiet. He’d give more if he could open his eyes and see where they were going, but something seemed to be blocking his sight.

“Kevin it’s good to see you,” Deidre Parker said as she walked into the ICU waiting area.

Kevin stood up and hugged Eric’s sister. She definitely wasn’t the teenager he remembered back on Diego Island. She’d grown, married, and now lived on the eastern shore of Lake Washington where she raised her children and managed the Parker’s slice of the Diego settlement.

“How is he?” Deidre asked.

“You knew about the cancer?” Kevin asked.

“Yes, he called a couple of months ago. He’s been worried about you, you know, what you’ll do. Oh god, Kevin, what do I do? Mother wants him brought to Florida. She thinks he’ll get better care in Palm Springs. She wanted him down there as soon as he told her about the cancer, but he fought her. He actually stood up to her for once in his life. What do I do?”

“I think that’s up to Peter right now,” Kevin said.

The helicopter noise had stopped long ago, but it was replaced with a warm, emptiness of the mind, as if he was dreaming, but someone had turned off the sound and hadn’t moved the camera in a long time. He wasn’t certain he wanted to wake up, now. He wasn’t certain where he was, exactly. He remembered the bullet in his thigh because he was crouched beside Staff Sergeant Wilson trying to get the new Captain on the radio when he was suddenly lying on his side. There wasn’t time to do anything other than bind the wound and keep trying to get that screwy Captain on the radio. A mortar round took the arm, Sergeant Wilson, and the radio which might have been the worse loss if the Hueys hadn’t already begun ferrying them out of that bloody valley.

Wasn’t Sergeant Wilson from Idaho? Wasn’t he queer, too? No, that was one of the orderlies at the hospital in Japan who’d sucked his cock late one night or had it been another of the patients. He couldn’t remember. What was it about Sergeant Wilson that he was supposed to remember?

“If Captain something sends us something let something, something,” was all he could remember. Well the Captain did send them out into that ambush. It was as if they were set up. How did Sergeant Wilson know that they were going to be sacrificed like that? Had the Captain done it before?

He was going to have to check on that once he got where? Where was he? Was this death? Nothing? Wasn’t there supposed to be something more?

“Mr. Charles, Mrs. James, you need to come in here,” the nurse said at the door.

They followed her into Eric’s cubicle. The silence startled them. All the wavy lines on the monitor had been replaced with flat ones. Deidre leaned into Kevin’s shoulder and began to softy weep.

Eric was dead.

Later, after they’d spoken at length to the police and hospital staff about what to do with Eric’s body once the coroner finished his grisly task, Kevin and Deidre took a cab downtown to the hotel where Deidre was staying. Six was waiting in the lobby having come at his uncle’s request. A dark fog surrounded them as they walked into the hotel’s restaurant and took a back booth with a view of the entrance to an office building across the street. Kevin ordered a double Scotch on the rocks. When the waiter asked if he wanted something specific Kevin shook his and said, “Just something strong, stronger is better.”

Deidre and Six ordered coffee and an antipasto to share.

“You’re Kevin’s nephew then,” Deidre said trying to come up with something to talk about rather than her dead brother. She felt a deep sadness and knew she would have a good cry later in her room, but now was not the time. “I think Eric said something about you last year when you’d been accepted to North Park. You’re in their special art program, too?”

“Well, I’m there because I’m family,” Six said. He definitely didn’t want to be here, but Euphorbia had meals to prepare, so she couldn’t be here and there was no one else. He felt very small and wished he, too, could have a belt of whiskey. “I have a trust fund that pays for my being at North Park.”

“Kevin, what happens now?” Deidre asked.

“I suppose, well, I don’t really know, but I suppose I’ll move to Montana,” Kevin said. He knew he didn’t want to stay at Charles House. Other than Euphorbia, he’d be the only adult and what it had been in the past was no longer there. “I’d like to have Euphorbia come with me, but I don’t know what will happen. We have Charles House to consider. There are quite a few students who depend on us. Right Six?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Six said shocked that Kevin was considering closing the house. “Would you and Euphorbia leaving mean I might be able to go to a different school? I mean if there wasn’t Charles House, what’s the purpose of forcing me to attend North Park.”

“Where’d you go, Montana?” Deidre asked.

“No, Portland, Lewis and Clark, if I could,” Six said, suddenly noticing Kevin was looking at him in that way of his, undressing him, thinking of the two of them together in bed. He felt the tingle of his cock responding to the attention even though he was certain that was the last thing he wanted. He hated the feeling that his inhibitions to sleeping with an old man, especially a relative, were being worn down.

“You’d be welcome with us in Montana,” Kevin said, “if that was to become a reality. I know Euphorbia would enjoy your company.”

“Yeah, Euphorbia,” Six said as he looked about the room before furtively adjusting himself. A brief thought of him riding a cowboy flashed across his mind only to be replaced with an image of Kevin going down on him. Who was the more perverse?

“In any event, Eric’s monetary half of our net worth goes back to the Parker Fund,” Kevin said. “The property in Montana is the only thing we share and I believe we’ve taken the right steps. You don’t think the Parkers will fight me over that, do you?”

“I’m the Parkers in this situation and I have no intention of touching anything you and Eric shared,” Deidre said. “You can have my assurance on that. Now, if you two will excuse me, I want to go up to my room and call Mother. I’ll get back with you tomorrow. It was very nice meeting you, uh, Six. You know, someday you’re going to have to tell me about that nickname.”

“I’m the sixth,” Six said. “Uncle Kevin is the fifth. There’s a long line of Kevin David Charles’s. I thought it would be kind of cool to be called Six and then it kind of stuck.”

“Well, you seem to be the kind of boy who’d do that,” Deidre said as she stood up.

Kevin followed and gave her a hug. Six stood and took her hand in his. They continued standing as she walked out of the restaurant and didn’t sit down until she went into the elevator.

“I figured she’d be crying,” Six said as he sat back down. “I always thought women cried a lot after someone died. Were you serious about me going to Montana with you?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin said. “I’m not certain of anything right now. I just don’t think I could live at Charles House anymore. It’s not the same and I want to get away.”

“You were probably thinking I’d sleep with you,” Six said and immediately regretted the comment. His uncle’s face seemed to fade out of focus for a brief moment before sadness overwhelmed it. Kevin took a big swallow, finishing his whiskey.

“Let’s go,” Kevin said.

Tiffani thought it strange that Mark wasn’t doing anything to hide the fact of where he was taking her. She knew that meant only one thing, this was a one-way trip for her; or, rather, one-way alive. The thought that he was going to kill her just as he’d tried to kill Jimmy made her begin to weep. She couldn’t help herself and she fully expected to be hit in the face again, but that didn’t happen.

They left I-90 at the Newport Hills exit and headed up. Mark certainly didn’t know her parents lived up this way. She hoped someone she knew would see her in the car and mention it to her parents, not that it would do her any good today, but if they started to look for her and that person came forward they might find her. It was something to think about, something other than what Mark had in mind once they got to wherever they were going.

They turned into a vaguely familiar cul-de-sac; one that she might have rode her bike on at an earlier age. Maybe someone from school lived down here, maybe a former boyfriend. They slowed to turn into a driveway and just as they did a car pulled in behind them. The garage door was open, but a police officer stood in the driveway between them and the door.

Mark slowed the car, and then suddenly gunned it aiming straight for the officer who jumped out of the way at the last minute. Unfortunately, Mark was so intent on driving over the officer he must have forgotten how much momentum he had. By the time he recovered and applied the brakes the car was plowing through the back wall of the garage and into the house’s family room causing both airbags to deploy.

After that, as sometimes happens, time slowed, well as far as Tiffani it slowed. She became aware of everything around her, especially Mark, her handcuffs, the still flying crash debris, police officers yelling at them, and the gun, the pistol, the dark gray steel of the thing as Mark pulled it out of the console between them. Despite having a nose bloodied by the airbag in the steering wheel, Mark opened the door and began shooting at the police.

Just as Tiffani instinctively recoiled from the noise and the actions of Mark, trying to hunker down in her seat away from inherent danger of the gun, the police began to return fire. Although she didn’t have a gun and wasn’t shooting at them, which should have clued the police into thinking that the passenger wasn’t playing an active in this scene, they were a suburban force not used to shootouts with gun toting sexual maniacs like Mark, who must have been at that time thinking only one thing: If they kill me, they won’t find out about the others I’ve killed. Tiffani knew none of this. All she was aware of was the first bullet. It must have come through the seat because it entered her back behind her shoulder. The burning pain was instantaneous and as she rolled away from it the next bullet, not having a seat to go through, entered her skull near the back and still having sufficient velocity went clear through the brain, ricocheted off the front of the skull and returned via a different path turning the contents of her cranium into a bloody goo.

After the eight policemen had expended nearly all their bullets and the victims of their aggressive response no longer moved, they slowly approached Mark’s car. The only person in the car who had had a gun was lying half out of the seat with numerous wounds, at least three of which would have been fatal in their own right, in his upper body, neck, and head. It was more than obvious he was dead, but one of the officers bent down and pressed two fingers against the boy’s neck.

“This one’s dead,” he said as he looked across the seat at a young, slender woman slumped in the seat. Her cuffed hands were held close behind her back, blood oozed from an open wound in her shoulder, but she appeared, to him, to be just as dead. Then he saw blood also oozing from a wound in the back of her head.

By the time Casey returned to the house the excitement had turned into the shock of the unexpected. He went into the kitchen looking for food and found Euphorbia weeping at the small table where she ate and handled the house’s accounts. Not certain what to do, he sat down opposite.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

He hoped he didn’t sound too inquisitive thinking now wasn’t the time to force an answer. Then, when Euphorbia glared at him, Casey knew something was dreadfully wrong.

“Someone die?” he asked.

“Why don’t you shut up and go away,” Euphorbia said as more tears filled her eyes.

“Sheesh, I just wanted to know what’s wrong,” Casey said as he stood up and walked away.

Not wanting to go to classes with a sore butt, he headed down to the TV room to see if anyone else was skipping class. He was still a bit unnerved about what the cabby had tried to force on him, but the nearly two mile walk from War Memorial Park had done him some good, so it wasn’t totally for naught. He wondered if Six was around because, if anything, at that moment being with a friend seemed a good idea.

Ben was the only person in the TV room. Casey sat down at the opposite end of the sofa.

“Where is everyone?” Casey asked.

“Uh, probably class or crying,” Ben said.

Casey looked at Ben and noticed that the boy’s eyes did seem to be a little red.

“So what’s been going on?” Casey asked.

“Where’ve you been, on the moon?” Ben asked.

“Hey don’t get snippy with me, I was at the hospital,” Casey said.

“Professor Parker is dead. Karl Klein killed him over at Biddly Hall. It was on all the news channels.”

“Well, I haven’t seen any news channels, so don’t go bitching at me.”

“What the hell’s gotten you stirred up? Tiffani run off to Karl?”

“I don’t know where she is and, quite frankly, I don’t give a shit about anything she does anymore.”

“Given up on going straight, huh?”

“Do you know what Green Hill is?”

“Yeah, it’s the kiddy prison in this State. Why, you meet someone from there?”

“Yeah, he tried to force me to suck his cock. I wouldn’t do it, but he said he’d come here and get it sometime.”

“Bummer.”

“Is that all you can say? Don’t you have at least an ounce of compassion?”

“Hey, Casey, you’re the cocksucker in this house, so don’t expect me to be sorry for you after all the cocks you’ve been putting in your mouth since moving in here.”

Casey stared at Ben and then turned away. A movie he didn’t recognize was on the TV and he decided to watch it for awhile since he didn’t want to go to any classes. He supposed he could take a nap, but he didn’t want to be alone. He looked at Ben, again, and wondered if he should ask him to come up to his room. They could lie together, sort of snuggle as long as they didn’t have any sex. Although his ass was slippery from the medicine, it wasn’t in any condition for fucking.

That got him to thinking about having Ben with him sometime in the coming week. Six might be willing, but Casey began to desire Ben, too, even though the other boy had been nasty to him in the past. Of course, with Professor Parker dead and all, nothing was going to happen this day.

“Well, if you want a blow job sometime, you know where I live,” Casey said.

“Get out of here fucker,” Ben sneered.

“We might do that, too, but not today. I guess I’ll go apologize to Euphorbia and see what I’m to do about lunch.”

“You just don’t know when to stop, do you,” Ben said.

“I know you’ll be knocking on my door, though, because you like my ass and you know I’ll suck you too.”

“Know what? You’re a pervert.”

Casey stood up and looked down at Ben. Yeah, they could get it on. They would get it on. Soon, too.

Unfortunately for Casey, he didn’t get it on with Ben or anyone else in the house for a long time. Sometimes a tragic event will cause relationships to change in a broader sense. Professor Parker was dead and, once word trickled to them, they found out about what happened to Tiffani, whose unexpected death had the most profound effect on Casey. He seemed lost in a world between incomprehensibility and immeasurable grief.

He returned from her funeral where he was expected to give a short eulogy, but found that he was unable to bring himself to stand before Tiffani’s family and not say how much she truly meant to him, how he had caressed her naked body while they were is the throes of sexual ecstasy. No, he couldn’t stand there and say, “Tiffani was the best person I ever met,” when all the time he was thinking, “Tiffani was the first girl, woman, who actually allowed me to experience the possibility of being straight.” No, they didn’t need to hear that from him.

He went to classes, did the required work, helped Euphorbia in the kitchen, and stayed away from everyone else. When winter break came along he packed up all his belongings and, having some degree of peace with his mother, returned to California uncertain he’d return to North Park at the end of January.

The bad thing about all of this was everyone else was dealing with their own grief over the loss of Professor Parker and change in the Charles House dynamic. With Kevin desiring to leave the house, Euphorbia had no interest in staying either. The Board of Directors and North Park College were at a loss at what to do with the remaining students, including Casey; though with Casey they did have the prior arrangement with his medical problems.

The other students were offered individualized solutions to their continued studies at North Park, or in the case of Six, Ben, and young Kevin, who expressed their wishes to leave the school and continue their future elsewhere, a financial package that would meet their individual needs. Charles House was going to close and be sold to North Park College.

Before any of this occurred, though, a strange thing happened the night Six and his uncle returned from the hotel. Six didn’t understand what was happening to him. He’d never experienced someone close, at least as close as his uncle’s lover, actually dying. He figured he was supposed to feel something, which he was, but he couldn’t wrap his mind around how he felt.

What he did feel, once they returned to Charles House and Uncle Kevin went down to his room, as an overwhelming sense of grief. He went up to his room, lay down on the bed, and began to weep. In no time at all he was bawling like a little kid and couldn’t stop it no matter how hard he tried.

After what seemed like hours, but in reality was less than one, Six went down to his uncle’s room. He hesitated a moment at the door uncertain he wanted to go in and be alone with a man who was definitely sexually interested in him, no matter their relationship. Yet, at that moment he was so wrapped up in his grief he knew of no one else in the house that might be able to sympathize with him. It was a risk he had to take.

When the door opened Six was immediately taken aback by Kevin’s appearance. No more than an hour had passed since their arrival at the house and his uncle looked much like Six felt.

“Uncle Kevin, I, well, you see, can we talk?” Six asked. He walked into the room past his uncle, suddenly very uncertain where he was going to take this. He wanted more than talk. He wanted to snuggle in his uncle’s arms and be comforted. To have Kevin tell him it was okay to feel this way, probably the way Kevin was feeling himself. He walked toward the bedroom.

“Where are you going?” Kevin asked.

Six turned, looked at his uncle for only a moment, and turned back to continue on into the bedroom. He sat down on the bed and began removing his clothes.

“No sex,” Six said. “I just want you to hold me. I need this. Okay?”

The next morning Six awoke early, sprawled naked along the body of his, also naked, uncle. They were both hard.

“Morning,” Kevin said. “I think I distinctly remember you saying something about no sex.”

“I did,” Six said as he slowly extricated his body from Kevin’s.

“You’re too skinny, you know,” Kevin said, turning on his side to face his nephew. He pressed the covers down to hide their nakedness from view.

“Yeah, well, I have to be slender to ride my bike,” Six said.

“Not that skinny. You’re doing something, something you shouldn’t. Want to tell me about it or should I call your mother.”

“I was seeing someone and going to group therapy for the past few years.”

“And your shrink thought it would be okay for you to stop treatment and come up here?”

“I didn’t ask his opinion on the matter,” Six said as he rolled onto his back. “How come we’re naked? Did we do something last night?”

“Not that I remember,” Kevin said. “Be right back.”

He got out of bed and went into the bathroom. Six heard the piss splash into the toilet followed by the flush. He thought about going himself, but that would mean being out of bed, naked, with his uncle watching and he didn’t think his dick was going to behave itself. As much as he didn’t want to do anything with his uncle, he wasn’t too certain his dick wasn’t equally interested.

Kevin came back and slipped under the covers.

“You’re kind of fit for an old guy,” Six said.

“I suppose that was meant to be a compliment,” Kevin said, “but I think we still have to talk about what we’re going to do about you keeping calories out of your body.”

“You’re not a shrink,” Six said as he rolled onto his side away from his uncle. He felt the bed move and then a large muscular arm pulled him tight against Kevin. He struggled to get free, but it was no use and he acquiesced to the embrace.

“No, I’m family, probably the best family you need right now. And I think it would be best if you came to Montana with me.”

“No sex.”

“Are we having sex now?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean you don’t want to.”

“No, but the love of my life is not here right now and I’m not thinking of that kind of stuff. It’d make me real happy if you weren’t either.”

“You don’t think I want to do it with you?”

“Well?”

“No! Well, I don’t, but sometimes I think my body isn’t listening.”

“You’re a beautiful young man, but frankly seeing you naked, completely naked, well, quite frankly, Six, you’re too skinny. I like my men to have a little more meat on them, which means we’re going to have to do something about your lack of weight.”

Six didn’t know how to respond. He wanted to complain, to demand that he was old enough to take care of himself, even though it was quite obvious he wasn’t. He wanted to get away, but he stayed in his uncle’s embrace and allowed sleep to retake his mind and body.