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 81
Jobs and Finding a Place 

The next morning we sat on the back porch drinking coffee and pouring over the ads in the newspapers Brian gave us, and he threw in a few suggestions of his own where we could look for work.  I circled a few ads, made some phone calls, and then borrowed my brother’s pickup and ventured out to look for a job while Jason stayed back to watch the boys.  I got lucky; the place gave hiring preference to veterans and I was hired at the first interview as the foreman of a large warehouse operation. I was happy as hell; even happier that my time in the military and service in Vietnam meant something to them.   Jason also found a job in a different warehouse.  Brian told us they were both owned by the same guy, plus he owned several more.

With jobs in place we needed transportation to get to work.  Brian called the dealership where he bought his vehicles and told them he was sending two guys over and to treat us right.  They did.  Partly because of Brian, and partly, I thought, because in conversation they learned that we were both Marine snipers and Jason was a Navy SEAL. Jason picked out a new black Dodge Ram, four-door pickup.  I couldn’t tear myself away from a used Jeep.  When we went inside to close the deals, the salesman asked about financing.

“Show me some payment plans,” Jason said.

“We’ll pay cash,” I said.

The salesman blinked. 

Jason turned and gave me a scowl.  “I don’t think so,” he said.

“Cash,” I said sternly.  “Call the First Equity Bank, I’ll authorize the transfer.”

The salesman looked at Jason, waiting for his approval.

“Okay, I guess it’s cash,” Jason said.

“You guys seem to be sort of together in this; are these separate ownership, or will both names be on both titles?”

“Both names on both titles,” Jason said.

After that we went house hunting. The plan was to find a place to rent while we took our time looking for a place to buy. We both wanted to get out of Brian‘s house and into a place of our own. Not familiar with the area, we went to an agency to guide us. His question about our wives made me know that he was curious about our situation, two men buying property together. 

“We’re both widowers, and now single dads,” I lied. “We need a place to raise two little boys.”

“Oh, how sad. But wonderful that you’ve teamed up,” he added quickly.

Jason added his own lie. “Yes, we met at a support group, and decided we might be able to help each other out.”

“Well, I’m sure I can find a suitable place to rent, but you know, if you’re serious about buying right now, I’ve got a place I would like to show you first.  It’s a few miles out in the country, a large old farmhouse that sits back off the road, twenty acres with a woods and a creek, the perfect place to raise two boys. It even has a small stable for ponies.”

Jason and I looked at each other. It was faster than we’d expected and we had agreed that we wouldn’t rush into anything. He reminded me of that.

But I said, “I say we look at it.”

It was more perfect than the agent had described.  Jason was duly impressed.  It was more than that for me; I was taken aback, even confused, by the surrealism. It started as we were driving up the lane; a vaguely familiar lane. After a tour of the house, I found myself walking toward the woods, leaving Jason and the agent talking. I went past the stable where the barn should have been.  There was no footbridge, and the creek was wider, but beyond the creek it looked familiar and for a moment I was seeing it through a veil, from a perspective far off, from a different time.  I felt a chill go down my spine as I gazed at the spot across the creek where….. 

“Ohh, Goddd!” It was a hoarse whisper; my own voice.  And I heard a voice, not mine, asking …..  “That okay this way?”  

“Oh, Geezuss, Jase, you don’t know….”  

I thought I heard thunder, like an echo in the distance; an echo from another time, and it was my voice echoing back to me….  “Ohh, Yess, fuck me!  Fuck me, Jase.  Godd, yes, don’t stop!” 

I felt sweat breaking out on my forehead and I felt suddenly dizzy, as if I might black out. The voices kept on, the words coming so fast that I could barely make them out. 

“You were wonderful, Jase.”  

“How do you want it?” he asked. 

“On my back, with you on top,” I said. 

The thunder grew suddenly louder in my head--deafening--a crescendo building up to a lightning flash and I closed my eyes against it, but the voices kept thundering in my ears. 

“Was it me fucking you, or were you thinking of my father?”  

“It was you, Jase; it was you fucking me.”  

“I love you, Son.” 

“Dad!…… Dad…..Don’t Leave Mmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. 

Everything suddenly became more intense, inside and all around me, and I had the sensation of spinning out of control as incoherent thoughts washed like a roaring tide in and out of my brain.

“Brad? What do you think?” 

I jumped.  It was Jason and the real estate agent who had come up behind me.

“I’ve been here before.”  The words came out in a frantic whisper, not an echo from a distant past, but my own voice, here and now.

“What?  Brad?…. are you okay?” Jason asked.

I felt a strong hand on my shoulder and looked around to see Jason standing there with a confused scowl. 

“You okay?” he asked again.

“Yes,” I answered quickly. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“You were looking a little far out there for a moment,” he said.

“I was just visualizing us here, and the boy….the boys…. Excuse me." I walked away, along the creek bank, leaving Jason and the real estate man standing.  I needed to be alone.  I went further, where the woods wrapped its solace around me. I fought down emotions that threatened to choke me and my eyes welled up with tears. 

"It was a dream."  I uttered the words quietly but with emphasis, as if to convince myself once and for all.  But a voice from my past haunted me…. It was in this place!  I tried to conjure up the voices again and when they wouldn't come I spoke the words myself from memory.  “Was it me fucking you, or were you thinking of my father?.. .It was you, Jase; it was you fucking me…. I love you, Son…. Dad!… Dad…. Don’t Leave Me…."

Why did I remember the words if it wasn't real?  Can a dream be that real? I looked back at Jason and the agent standing there talking and no doubt wondering what the hell was going on with me.  I started walking back and Jason came to meet me.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as we approached each other.

“Nothing’s wrong. Do you like the place?” I asked.

“No, let’s back up. You were visualizing us here, with the boy, you said."

"Yes, the boys playing back in the woods, all of us swimming in the creek.” I pointed to a huge oak.  "That'd be a great place for a tree house."

"No!” he said emphatically. “You said with the boy, then you corrected yourself.  You were off someplace back there. You were breaking out in a sweat.”

“Hot flashes,” I said, laughing nervously.

“No, man, I heard you say you’d been here before. This is a place out of your dream,” he said.

I nodded, trying to fight down the emotions.  "It all flashed back all of a sudden.  I heard his voice……"

"Who's voice?"

"We can't go there," I said, shaking my head. 

“We can look for another place,” he said.

“No,” I said quickly. “This is perfect, for us and the boys.”

"Brad, you're going to be living it all over……"

I shushed him with a flick of my hand. We were back where I'd left the agent. 

“Would I be correct in assuming that you’re no longer interested in renting?” the agent asked.  “Do you need a couple of days to think it over?  I can take it off the market for a couple of days.”

I knew within minutes that I wanted the place. I had to have it. I didn’t need time to think about it.  But I went into the house with Jason to talk it over. 

“Are you sure about this, Brad? Whatever you had before…. you can’t bring it back here,” he cautioned. “Are we going to be living with ghosts from your past?”

I laughed again. “I’m going to be living with ghosts for a long time, it’s just a matter of which past they’re from.  I want this place, Jason.  I want it for us.”

“Well, let’s see what we can work out in the way of payments,” he said.

“We can get the payments down to whatever we want with a large down payment,” I said.

Jason was edgy about me using my money to make the sizeable down payment.

“It’s the perfect place. Let’s don’t make money an issue,” I said.

“That’s easy for you to say, it’s your money,” he said.

I heard the agent come up onto the porch. I didn’t want to have the conversation in front of him. 

“Do you like the place?” I asked Jason.

“I love it.  It’s the perfect place to raise the boys,” he said.

That was enough for me. I walked out on the porch and told the agent we would take it. We went back to his office to take care of the paperwork. Jason balked again when the agent, assuming correctly, asked for both our names and other pertinent information. 

“Put it in his name,” Jason told him.

I put up a restraining hand and the agent leaned back in his chair.

“Would you excuse us for a moment,” I said. 

“Certainly.  Take your time.  There’s a café next door if you want to discuss it over a cup of coffee.  Tell them to put it on my tab.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” I said. We went next door and I ordered coffee at the counter then we went to a booth.  “You wanta tell me what that was all about?” I asked, not bothering to hide my irritation.

“I just don’t want my name on something that doesn’t really belong to me,” he said stubbornly.

“Geezuss, Jason, after all we’ve been through, I can’t believe we’re even talking about anything so trivial.  And I’m telling you right now, I’m not going to have this conversation over every little decision that comes along.”

“I don’t consider this a little decision,” he said.

“Well, it’s a pretty damned simple one,” I said.  “It’s the ideal place for the boys, and us, it’s for sale, and we can afford to buy it.”  I could tell by his tight-lipped expression that I wasn’t getting through to him. 

“We never really talked about how we would do this; build a life together,” he said.

“I didn’t think we needed a blueprint,” I said curtly. “I thought we knew each other well enough to know how things would be.”

He shrugged.

“What the hell is the problem?” I asked.

“You already paid for my truck.  I don’t like you paying for everything.”

“Correction. I didn’t buy you a truck.  I bought us both two vehicles. Both of our names are on both titles,” I said.  “Look, we both needed something to drive. We need a place to live.  We’re going to need all new furniture.  I’ve got the money to pay for it.  If it was the other way around, you would be doing the same thing and you know it.”

“I just don’t like it,” he said.

“Okay, how about this?  I make the down payment, you make the monthly payments.”

He thought about it for a moment then put out his hand.  “All right, I can handle that.”

I made the down payment large enough that his payments would be easy to make.

Since the place was vacant, we had immediate occupancy. We had a lawyer at the closing--one that my brother recommended--and while we were there we asked him if he handled adoptions.  He was reluctant, said he was not well versed in arranging adoptions, nor was he anxious to do so. He said he                                  would contact an agency.

“There wouldn’t be any agency.  We already have the children,” I said. “We brought them back from Vietnam when we were discharged from the Marines.”

“Oh, well, then if you’ve already gone through that red tape, their papers would no doubt be in order.  It would be more a matter of formalities.  Certainly, I would be happy to do that for you.”

The eight-room house had four bedrooms, but when we showed the boys through and give them each their pick of rooms, they weren’t enthused.  That bewildered us at first, the way they looked at each other--boys always wanted their own rooms, I thought--but then it struck us both at the same time.

“They want to stay together,” I said under my breath.  Jason nodded. 

“Tell you what.  How would you guys like to have bunk beds and sleep in the same room?” he said. 

They smiled at that, but then they asked Jason and I where we would be sleeping. When we showed them the room that would be ours, they picked the room right next to it for their own. Neither of us objected, although we would have preferred they take the room further down the hall.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to be careful and quiet,” I said as we were going back downstairs.

So along with the rest of the furniture that we bought, we got bunk beds, along with dressers, desks, chairs, lamps and rugs for the floors. The boys helped pick everything out for their room. They were excited to help set up the bunk beds and had their say in how the room would be arranged.  By the time we finished it was late and we went out to celebrate our new home. I had something more in mind but the boys wanted Burger King. When we got back they wanted to use the rain shower again. We left them to it and waited in our room. It was heart-warming to hear them laughing and giggling. They came bounding out of the bathroom, naked as the day they were born.

“I think we started something,” I said.

“Hey, it’s just the four of us,” Jason said with a shrug.

They seemed happy when we tucked them in that night, Kyle in the top bunk and Devon in the lower one. Jason and I went back downstairs and I poured us each a glass of bourbon.  The rest of the house didn’t seem to be as welcoming as the boy’s bedroom and we went out to sit on the porch. I knew it was going to take me some time to get used to it because of its resemblance to the house in my dream.

“We might as well have left the rest of house empty of furniture.  I can tell we’re going to be spending most of our time out here, at least in good weather,” Jason said. 

“It may take a while for it to feel like home,” I said.

He laughed softly, shaking his head. "Hell, I'd be just as at home out there," he said, looking to the woods.  Then he looked around at me. "It's still in me, Brad.  We're home, but part of me is still over there. God help me, part of me misses it."

"Anytime you feel like sleeping out there….it's your woods," I said. “If you want me along, just say so.”

When we looked in on the boys just before going to bed ourselves we found them sleeping together in the lower bunk.  I stood there choked up, looking down at the two boys wrapped around each other, and I saw Jason make a swipe at his eyes.  We left them.

“It’s going to take a while for them to feel safe apart,” I said as we left their room.

“Well, hell, we feel more content sleeping in the same bed, why shouldn’t they,” Jason said.

“I was thinking, though, for the sake of appearances, we should set up another bedroom,” I said.

“For one of us?”

“Yes, for appearances. It can be a guest room. And I think we should set up another bedroom with bunk beds, for when one of the boys is ready to move into it on his own."

“Why would we need bunk beds in both rooms?” he asked.

“They’ll have friends staying over.”

"And you don't think they'd mind sleeping together with their friends?" he said with a grin.

“We won’t know about that for a while, will we?”

Jason and I made love that night, the first time in our new home.  I saw as he was fucking me why he had insisted on the low dresser with the huge mirror when we picked out the furniture, and the two large standing tilting mirrors.  We could watch ourselves in bed.

“Do you suppose we should get a lock for the door?” Jason asked as we were later lying together.

“No. I don’t want the boys to feel isolated or locked away from us. We’ll just have to be careful.  If they happen to come in we’ll just tell them we were wrestling or something.”

"That'll work for a while," he said.

Next morning we went in to check on the boys and found them dressed, sitting on the lower bunk. They had made up their bunks.

“We didn’t know if we should leave our room,” Kyle said.

Jason and I sat on either side of them. Jason put his arm around Devon.

“Guys this is your home now,” he said.  “You can go anywhere you want in the house.”

“What about outside?” Devon asked.

“Outside, too. It’s all yours for as far as you can see. Just don’t go back to the woods and the creek by yourselves.”

When Jason took them downstairs I couldn’t resist checking under Devon’s pillow.  The St. Christopher medal was there.

One morning I noticed the small glass jar sitting on the dresser on an OD Army green handkerchief. It contained the dirt Jason had brought back from Vietnam. Later, one morning I woke up to find myself alone in bed.  I dismissed it, thinking Jason had gone to check on the boys.  When he didn't return I got up to check on him.  He wasn't in the house.  Suddenly I knew where he was. I went upstairs to slip on my jeans and boots and noticed the jar of dirt was missing from the dresser.  I didn't bother to go look for him.  I knew where he was.  I didn't mention it next morning and neither did he.

To be continued...  

Posted: 04/10/15 rp