A Marine Called Jason
(Revised)
by: Peter

(© 2007-2015 by the Author)
 

The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at...

Chapter 73
The Orphanage 

A couple of weeks after my visit to the orphanage, I got my back pay. They even included combat pay, due to some technicality that I was recovering from combat wounds.  I didn’t know what I was going to do with that much money in a lump sum, and I didn’t have any place to keep it.  I decided to give it to Toby to keep for me.  I also decided to put some of it to good use and fulfill the commitment I’d made to Sister Mary Margaret at the orphanage. I told her to give me a list of the things she needed.  She wasn’t bashful; it was a long list. Still, I could see she needed things she hadn’t put on her list, simply because she thought they couldn’t be had.  She was wrong.  I wrote to Hunter and Melissa with a long list of school supplies that I asked them to purchase and send, as well as clothes of varying sizes. I also told them to have their mom pick up an array of cooking spices for one of the sisters who loved to cook.  I gave them Toby’s address to send it to.  I knew they would have a great time doing it.

Not being in Intel anymore, I wasn’t in Saigon anymore. I was out in the boonies, and getting into the city was something I looked forward to, and more so if there was a chance of meeting up with Jason. Sometimes I wished I’d stayed in Intel, he would have known where to find me, and I could have seen him more often. Now when I was in the city, I had to divide my time between the orphanage and having a good time letting off steam, and waiting to see if Jason showed up.  But then there were probably times when he was waiting on me to show and I didn’t. It was the luck of the draw and there were long stretches when we didn’t see each other.

Richards was excited that I was going into Saigon, but disappointed that he wouldn’t be going along; he put in for time off but it wasn’t approved.  I told him it wouldn’t be a fun trip anyway; that I was going to work at an orphanage. A little part of me wished he could come along, in case I didn’t meet up with Jason. We never knew when we would see each other; that was the only regret I had about my decision to become a sniper. I told Richards about Toby's and how to find the place in case he made it to Saigon some other time on his own.  For sure there would be someone willing and eager to take the boy under his wing.

First stop when I was let out of the Jeep was Toby’s. I was hoping to find Jason there but I also wanted to see if the stuff had arrived from Hunter and Melissa.  It had, I could tell by Toby’s smile when I walked in.

“I knew you wouldn’t mind if they sent it here,” I said.

“No, but what the hell did they send? I’ve got boxes stacked to the ceiling in my store room.”

“Stuff for the orphanage; clothes and school supplies,” I said as I was looking all around the bar.

“He hasn’t been in,” Toby said.

“If he shows up, tell him I’m at the orphanage. Listen, Toby, Jason said you’ve got some pictures.”

“Yeah, they’re in a sealed envelope, in my safe. You wanta see them?”

“Yes.”

He waved somebody over to watch the bar and took me upstairs to his quarters.  Not much had changed, except the big, oversized couch had a bright coverlet over it.  He opened his safe and handed out a large, sealed and taped manila envelope. 

“I can re-seal them in another envelope,” he said.

My hands trembled as I opened the envelope. I took the pictures out and my chest tightened.  As I went through them the tightness became worse and I felt myself breaking out in a sweat.

“Are you okay?  You’re sweating,” Toby said as he stood up and turned on the ceiling fan.

My hands were shaking so bad that I couldn’t hold the pictures. I laid them on the couch.

“Hey, man, what’s the matter?” Toby asked as he gently gathered up the pictures and sat down beside me.  “You need some water?”  He didn’t wait, but got up and went to get a glass of ice water.  He rubbed the cold glass across my forehead as he handed it to me.  I downed it and handed the glass back to him.

“Those pictures are getting you really up tight,” he said.

“Yes,” I said in a soft tone as I wiped the sweat from my forehead.  “I….I’ve seen some of them before.”

“Oh, shit, you mean in that other life,” Toby said.

I nodded.

“Damn, that is weird as hell,” he said.  “It’s like, what?…. you just move in and out of that zone?  Are these the same pictures?”

“I recognize some of them are awful close. It gets scary, the things that I remember that turn out to be true.  I never told you….you were in that zone,” I said.

“Oh, really.  What dumb-ass stuff did I do?”

“You were him,” I said, nodding to the pictures that Toby had placed on the table in front of us.

“I was….Jason?” he asked with a bewildered look.

“Yes.  Jason was dead, and I came back to get….” I dropped my head, fighting back the emotions building up in me.  “To get his son and take him back to the States.  I went to the Trent….you had bought the place after the war and was still running it….and I got our room…..”

“Number 238,” he put in.

“Yes.  And you came to the room, dressed in full combat gear; you were Jason for me that night.”

“A poor second, to be sure,” he scoffed.

“I don’t remember a lot of the details, but so much of it is so real when it comes back to me.”

“It’ll probably take a while to sort it all out and put it behind you,” he said.

I sat gazing at the pictures spread across the table and felt a tingling in my loins. Some of them I was seeing for the first time but others were vaguely familiar.  I looked at Toby for a second then back at the pictures.

“Do you want me to still keep the pictures for you?” he asked.

“Yes, thanks. Neither of us has anyplace to keep them.  Godd, I wish he was here,” I said quietly. I looked at Toby again. “I miss him so damned much sometimes, I can’t stand it.”

“You love the guy, don’t you?”

“It’s not supposed to show,” I said.  “Toby……”

“Do you need another glass of water?” he asked.

“No. Toby, could we….c-could you…..?”

“No,” he said. “No, let’s don’t go back there, okay?  It wasn’t real and I don’t think we should dignify it by making it so.  You wait on Jason.” 

I think I was relieved in a way, that he refused me. He was right; it wasn’t a good idea to keep going back.  But then he threw me a curve.  He started taking off his clothes.

“Let’s just have sex,” he said. “I think you need it.” 

“I want to,” I said. “Godd, I want to so bad. I want you to fuck my brains out.”

“But….we’re not going to….are we?” he said pausing with his hands at his belt.

I shook my head. “I love him, Toby.  I want you right now, but I love him. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” “He picked up his shirt. “Listen, you’ve got those boxes in my storeroom,” he said, pulling his shirt back on.

Toby took me back to the storeroom where the boxes were stacked.  We carried them out front where I hailed a rickshaw to deliver me and my cargo to the orphanage.

Sister Mary Margaret was overwhelmed. She wept, then laughed and clapped her hands and rushed to get the other nuns, and they all laughed and cried and danced with joy; and they didn’t even know what was in the boxes yet. We carried the boxes inside and they began unpacking them. They laughed and wept some more, and hugged and kissed me.  While they distributed the clothes and arranged the school supplies in proper order for the kids to take them, I went to work on some projects that needed attention.

There was a table that was propped up with a broken leg. Some other guys had started building desks and bunks, and there was another leak in the roof.  There was tar in the shed but nobody had gotten around to fixing the leak. I started to take off my shirt to climb up on the hot roof but thought better of it.  Sister Mary Margaret saw me and told me it was all right.  So I took it off.

I got out the rickety ladder and started to climb up when this guy came out of the main building, shirtless and not shaven and looking like he’d been on a three-day binge. I stepped back down off the ladder, a bit disturbed that he came out of the area of the sleeping quarters.

“Hey,” he said, shading his eyes from the sun.

I scowled at him. “Did you sleep here?” I asked. I don’t know why I was so upset, I had slept here myself, back in young Jase’s room, in my dream.  But that was a dream, this was real.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit improper,” I said.

He reared back in disbelief.  “What’s improper about it, you think I was sleeping with the sisters or molesting the kids?” he said defensively. “I delivered the tar but I was too drunk to get up on the roof.  Glad to see you’re taking care of it.  Hey, there’s a new ladder hanging back behind the building.”

“All right.  Good.  This one’s about had it.”

“Yeah, it needs to be busted up and used for firewood before somebody gets hurt on it,” he said as he walked over and took the ladder away from the building and threw it hard against the side of the fountain.  It splintered into several pieces.

I went around back to get the other ladder. I noticed it was “Property of The US Government.”  I climbed up a ways but stopped when I felt the weight of the other guy coming up behind me, carrying a second bucket of tar.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” I asked.

“Yeah, I need to sweat it out,” he said. “Besides, I don’t think you realize how bad it is. I don’t know if two buckets of tar are even going to be enough.”

“Is there more where this came from?”

“Fuck, yeah, the Pentagon sent it over, special delivery,” he said, laughing, then quickly put his hand over his mouth and looked down to see if there was anyone who heard him.  “I gotta watch my mouth.”

I found out his name was Kirby. We worked for over two hours patching buckled seams and nail holes that had rusted out. The roof needed to be torn off and replaced, but getting that much material would be near impossible, so we would have to make do for the time being.

Several times I looked down when I was working near the edge of the roof and saw the same little boy looking up at me.  He seemed to be following me around the perimeter of the building. I smiled and waved now and then, and he smiled and waved back. But he wasn’t the one. He was part American, that was for sure, but he wasn’t the one I identified most closely with the one I felt was likely Jason’s son.

We were running out of tar and there was still a good part of the roof that needed patching.  Suddenly I thought of something.

“Listen, Kirby, where did you get this tar….could you get some corrugated tin, if there was enough money?”

He laughed. “This whole fuckin’ city is for sale for the right price.”

“Find out how much it would take,” I said.

He looked at me. “Okay.  You get an inheritance or something?”

“I got twenty six months back pay.”

"Man, they really must've had your pay fucked up."  

He started counting the sheets of tin.  “I’ll need to get nails, too,” he said.  “And the sheeting is rotted in places, we need some wood.”

“Whatever you need.  Find out how much and I’ll get you the money.” I remembered that I did indeed also have an inheritance.

When we were finished we cleaned the tar off our hands and some off our boots then had some cool tea that the sisters had made. They kept it in a container hung down in the well.  Even without ice, it was the best tea I’d ever had. They thanked us profusely for our work and we tried to shrug it off.  We were both embarrassed by their fawning attention.

After Kirby left I hung around and had some more tea and talked with Sister Mary Margaret.  I wanted to learn more about the boy that I was sure was Jason’s.

“Do you know who his mother is?” I asked when I’d pointed him out.

“I don’t know her name,” she said. “She was a prostitute, I’m sure.  I remember she was wearing a very tight, bright red dress the day she dropped him off.  I didn’t have a chance to talk to her, she rushed off, as if she were frightened of something or someone.”

“That would be….,” I caught myself, hoping I didn’t look embarrassed. “Never mind,” I said, with a wave of my hand. She simply smiled.  It had to be Ling!  “The other boy, the one who follows me around.  Do you know anything about him?”

“Only that he has American blood. A soldier brought him to us; said he found him roaming the streets.  I didn’t think he was telling the truth. He was returning to the States and said he just wanted to be sure the boy was taken care of.  I don’t know if the child was his, but there was an attachment between them.  Then I began getting checks from the soldier every month or so.”

“But the guy never said anything about sending for the boy?” I asked.

“No, nothing.”  She sighed. “It is much the same with all of them.  They are throw away children.”

“Well, Sister, I’m seriously considering the possibility of salvaging one of them,” I said.

“The one of the girl in the red dress?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She smiled but didn’t say what I knew she was thinking; that I thought the boy was mine.

“Actually, WE are considering it,” I went on.  “A buddy and me, if they’ll let us take him back.”  I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about Jason, but it wouldn’t matter. I would take the boy back myself if need be.  But I thought Jason could be convinced. As for the woman in the red dress, I was convincing myself that it was Ling because I wanted to believe it.  But most of the girls at the Dragonfly wore red dresses.

Next time I was in Saigon on an overnight I found that Kirby had left word at the orphanage that he could arrange for the materials we needed for the roof.  I got the money from Toby--he served as my banker--and left it with Sister Mary Margaret and told her to tell Kirby to try to round up some more guys to do the work.  I would also try to find some guys, namely Jason, and whoever else I could round up. I figured Toby would know some GIs who would pitch in.

It was a few weeks before it all came together, and it wasn’t as I had hoped.  There was me and Jason, waiting on Kirby to show up with the material.   When he did, he was by himself.

“I was hoping for more guys than this,” I said, rather sullenly.

“Any more would just be in our way,” Kirby said.

We shed out shirts and got to work. We unloaded the materials in the courtyard then started tearing off the old rusted roof and tossing it into the truck. 

“Where’re you going to dump this shit?” Jason asked Kirby.

“I don’t know. Probably leave it on the truck. That way somebody else will have to unload it before they can use the vehicle.”

“How’d you manage to confiscate the vehicle anyway?” Jason asked.

“Hey, hey,” he admonished him.  “It’s called borrowing. It was just sitting there and I borrowed it.”

      “Did you get the money from Sister Mary Margaret?” I asked Kirby.

“Nope, didn’t need it.”

“What!”

“Government surplus,” he said.

“Geezuss, Kirby, this isn’t just a couple of buckets of tar,” I said.  “If they find out……”

“Come on, do you really think they’re gonna come and rip the roof off of an orphanage?” he said, laughing.

It was hard, hot work but none of us minded. I especially didn’t mind watching Jason’s sweaty muscles rippling in the warm sunlight.

The nuns brought out cool tea for us several times.  Jason asked them how they got the tea so cold, without any ice.  They said they hung it down in the well.

“It’s a wonderful and noble thing you’re all doing,” Sister Mary Margaret said.

“Nope, it called putting on a roof,” Kirby said.  And that pretty much summed it up for all of us.

 I noticed the two boys again. One sat on the garden wall, watching us while the other one followed us from the ground, around the building as we worked.  I waited to see if Jason noticed them.  He did, one of them.

“That little shit must be going to be a roofer when he grows up,” he said. “Have you noticed, he follows us around wherever we’re working.”

“Notice the kid sitting on the wall over there,” I said. “He hasn’t taken his eyes off of us.”

“Maybe they’ll start up Ling and Lang Roofing,” he said, laughing.

Maybe they will, I thought.  Just maybe they will.

When we were finished, Kirby took off with the truck filled with rusted tin and rotten wood, and Jason and I were left dirty and sweaty with no place to go. 

"You wanta get a room so we can shower?" I asked him.

"That sounds like a plan.”  We had left our overnight bags at Toby's.

Before we could sneak off the sisters brought out lunch. About the only place to sit was on the garden wall and Jason asked the little boy if we could sit with him. With a big smile the kid scooted over to let Jason sit down. The kid was cute as hell.

“You’ve got company,” Jason said under his breath, nodding past me.

I glanced around and there was the other little boy hovering close. When I motioned to him he climbed up on the wall and I sat down beside him. This is going to work out, I thought.

Toby had already arranged for the room and when he saw us come in he reached under the bar and brought out our overnight bags.

Jason laughed.  "He don't want us to come in any farther, we smell so bad."

But Toby set two cold beers on the counter.

"We should drink these outside," I said.

"Park your asses," Toby said.

We downed the beers fast and got up to leave.

"Room 238," Toby said as we were leaving.

It didn’t matter that we were hot and sweaty and smelly. Just inside the room Jason pulled me into his arms. “Godd, I want you so damned bad!  It’s been too long,” he said just before he kissed me. 

We showered and scrubbed each other and by the time we were finished, we were both hard. Knowing how bad he wanted me, I didn’t think we would bother with foreplay, but we did.  He did.  He was all over me and I gave back in kind, but he initiated everything. I think we kissed every inch of each other’s bodies.  At one point we were in a fiery rimming sixty nine, a first for us.  He murmured again that he wanted me and he rose up to come up beside me.  I had the lube in my hand.  He took it and much to my surprise, he lubed himself up. I had misunderstood but he was making it quite clear.

“Fuck, man, I can’t wait to have you inside me again.”

His words were music to my ears.

To be continued...  

Posted: 03/13/15 rp