Tag: Roanoke

The White Trash Veteran: Chapter 1

The White Trash Veteran

The cricks and thickety hollers of West Virginia smelled just like Goose Sampson recollected. While he was gone, he wouldn’ta, couldn’ta and repeatedly did not conjure up the aroma in his imagination. It was unlike any scent his nose done made acquaintanceship with in the jungles of Vietnam. T’was fresh like snow but musty like rain, both dirtsy and woodish, earthy like a campfire and airy like a whetstone, memorable as mama and homey as hugs. He appreciated the fougère of the terroire, though Goose remained polite-nod strangers with both them words.
Carrying a poke fulla dollars and a pocket fulla pantyhose, he hurried by shanks’ mare on through the Appalachian woodlands, darting from sods to bald and back. Sirens blared yonder. Goose stopped when he got to a babbling run and sent the pantyhose floating yanway.
He knewed the area round Martinsburg like the upper sidea his pecker, and he learnt plenty about sneak-a-sleeking through the wooly wilderness of Vietnam. T’wasn’t so different here. Scurrying like a stinky sally on over muddy drafts fulla ferns and towering trees past critters and bugs and varmints chirping and growling and hissing, and there he was, a hillbilly blundering again through laps and laurel hells.
Vietnam got more wetlands, that was the only difference. T’was enough though. Goose discottoned to wetlands.
And skeeters. Vietnam got a peck of skeeters.
Of nightfall, he made it back to Smashwood Trailer Park. He was outta wind, dirty like a cellar, armpits sweat-soaked, but he sauntered in, casual as a bowl of buttermilk. The park was working alive with folks and fellers who Goose knewed since he was a boy. Did them’all know he robbed a bank? They couldn’t know, and ain’t nobody took no note of him. He returned from Vietnam a couple weeks back, so nary the whombodies got whopper-jawed at him moseying home buttermilk-like. He had a poke, t’was all. Just a knapsack, like any feller might could tote.
Nobody knewed it was fulla red-hot greenbacks.
Nobody knewed Ellen been hooking it on the other side of town neither. Ellen was Goose’s wife. They ain’t never done live in matrimony, as they jumped the broom only days before Goose shipped out to the steamy greens. Ellen done come up in the family fashion, so they got married with a hurry and a hoop-dee-hoo. Now Goose returned to the joyness of meeting his newborned son Moses and to the sadness of Ellen admitting she been turning tricks to pay the bills. Army don’t pay diddly.
Goose did more shouting than he cared to admit, and he blistered and kicked up purple, raring and pitching, then he punched a hole in the wall and regretted letting his son see that and afrearing from it, and nothing Goose could do would make him stop crying. He said no wife of his gonna go and sell her God-given ladyness to any pecker-toter with dollars and a stiffy, cuz what was the point of being a man if you can’t keep your little lady from hooking it? But he done got drafted to the other side of the ever-blesséd world, so what was he sposedta do about it? Can’t do squat! Goose screamed like a river at a dam, til Ellen begged him to stop or the neighbors gonna call the sheriff, and Goose wanna ram his noggin into the wall until something somewhere broke.
The whatnots rising in him, Goose only regained hisself when he saw Vietnameys watching him like sentries from the woods behind the trailer. That turned out to be an illusion, but it got Goose calm as a clam, sending Ellen and Moses inside. Then he felt hisself a fool when he reckoned t’was just some shadowy tree swaying in the breeze, and he pretended ain’t nothing happen. He don’t want Ellen to think he couldn’t cope or Moses to think his pops was fearful.
So he steeled up for the woman and the boy. They got needs, and a rock don’t. He ain’t think twice about giving Ellen the cash-money from the robbery. “Don’t spend it all at oncet,” he said.
And he felt bad that he felt good about leaving. He gotsta skedaddle while the heat was on. And he gotsta go less he lose control of his fists again. That boy ain’t a wall, and the lady ain’t a soldier.
She nodded, and she whispered, “Thank you…”. She kissed Goose upon the cheek. That felt good. Damn good. Something about tenderness from a lady reassures a man he is alright and cures a touchous soul. Her lips wouldn’t tremble so soft-like if he was a monster. Ellen wouldn’t kiss a john the way she kissed Goose. He ain’t tell her not to whore it out no more cuz it was implied from the hole in the wall and cuz he ain’t want her to lie and say she would quit off when she really wouldn’t.
The only thing better than kissing Ellen was playing with his son — Moses, but Ellen said everwhom was calling him Buck, cuz he be climbing like a goat. Goose liked that, cuz he was called Buck as a tyke too, on account of his buck teeth. Ellen ain’t know that when she fell to calling Moses Buck.
Buck afreared Goose all afternoon. He ain’t never met the hairy stranger — Goose been letting his hair and his beard go wild now that he ain’t got a sergeant jawing at him about it — it was still coming in dry and coarse though, only gradually returning to health. When Goose smiled like a lamb and pooped down onto the floor of the trailer at Buck’s height to vroom-vroom with his toy truck, Buck giggled and played along. He clum on Goose’s back and rode him like a pony.
Playtime was interrupted when there came a knocky-knock upon the trailer door. It was Anita Daylily, a high-headed whomgoody with a puff of hair and her muff in a huff that some policeman was on the wander, asking if anybody in the trailer park seen Goose — course he asked after his real name, Martin Sampson.
Ain’t nobody in the park gonna make it easy on a policeman. Goose was from round here. Officer Whomsoever was not. Or maybe he was, Goose don’t know. Anyway, that was his cue to scram. Some snoop-nose peckerwood at the bank musta reckonized his voice.
“I gotta go, son,” Goose said. He got down upon his knee to give li’l Moses a big hug goodbye. “Moses…”
“Bye.” T’was all li’l Moses Buck said. He weren’t muchuva talker yet.
Goose kissed him goodbye, and he kissed Ellen goodbye too but in a different way, then he went on back to bush in the wilds up behind Smashwood. He ain’t wanna whisk off, but he ain’t wanna stay even harder. It was better this way, for him to be gone. He gotsta get a grip on hisself, and a man gotsta do that alone.
The world seemed right before the war, right in a way he couldn’t perceive then or articulate now. Expectations done broke, he thought. Goose went to war, he pulled the appropriate trigger at appropriate times, he followed orders mostly, he came back alive, he got money, he gave it to a woman to spend. He did his part. He completed the minimum requisited of a man. But it felt like he done jack up every single thing in the world. He was a retard in boot camp, he dropped his rifle, he got scared as a bunny, he was captured, needed rescue, he lost, he failed, he fell, he wailed. He could get done up by the Vietnameys prolly crawly-trawling the countryside anytime. He done develop a sixth sense about ’em, and it been twinging like a siren. Ain’t quit off since Muck Dan Foo. He don’t wanna go look in the woods lest he either get took captive again or see that he imagined phantoms.
He stayed on the hoof, alert but hazed. He gotsta hide til the cops stop looking for him, wander til the sun sets, lay awake til the dawn comes. One day at a time.
He left Smashwood Trailer Park, but in a way, it felt like he ain’t never return from the Army. He only ever left Smashwood once really. Wise honkies say home is the place where, when you show up, they have to take you in. But war is too. Dumb hillbilly says home is the place where, once you leave, you can never return. War is that too.
The road ran to the highway, and Goose stayed parallel to it so nary a cop or a Vietnamey could see him. They did that in Vietnam, staying parallel to rivers, not roads, but it was the same idea. A river was just the universe’s road. If the Army controlled a river, they’d travel on a riverboat afloat, but if the Vietnameys did, they’d walk parallel to the river, far enough away to be unseen from it.
He noodled on a destination, any one would do, so long as it was away from Ellen and the boy and the skeeters and slant-eyed jaspers of Vietnam. He armybooted through the woods till he wound up on the highway. Rambling along the roadside for a spell, he let his mind dangle like a rod. Plans formed like constellations, but Goose bit back the bubbles of his notions and pondered like a buddha.
The camp cook Sam learned him pondering, but moments jumbled and mixed like phuh. Goose put one foot in front of the other, like the first drop of water striking out a path to sea. T’was hard to build a river with cops and Vietcong and Ellen’s johns blocking the route.
He might as well hitch a ride, he thought, so he thumbed out. It was mostuva hour before a truck pulled over, a big rig hauling cabbages to Roanoke, Virginia. The truck cab smelled of raw cabbage and chewing tobacco.
T’was good enough for Goose, who said he wanna go to Roanoke too. The trucker got a calypso song playing on the eight-track, and Goose wondered why a white man got a feel for calypso, but Goose ain’t ask after it. Goose was in boot camp with a Trinidadian feller, who did flop his dingdong on the regular to calypso records. Goose got no quarrel with calypso.
The driver was Buford, a right-country sumbitch with a ruddynut face and a extra-ruddy mustache that drooped in two lines down to his chin. He got a big head of curly hair.
“You was in the Army?” Buford asked.
Goose dunno how that Buford could tell he was Army. Maybe he done seed Goose’s dog-tags or something. Maybe he just assumpted — Goose weren’t cowering in Canada, and he looked too dumb for the Air Force and too tough for the Navy. Goose said, “Yessuh.”
Buford nodded. “I’s a Navy man, mahself.”
“Oh, tha’ss nice, didya enjoy ya vacation durin’ the war?” Goose said with one whoop, two guffaws and a series of slaps upon his knee.
Buford laughed along with him, and them two swapped insults and war stories like ornery nurses. Turnt out they was both in the same engagement in Na Doong. They might well have done pop off at the same damn gook. Felt good to know it, it settled the cockles of Goose’s manhood. The war was only over a couple months ago, so it warmed his heart to speak of it like history.
But it lingered upon his mind like only the present could. The future stopped the moment he arrived in Vietnam, and Goose ain’t slow his uppermostness down, not then, not now. The past might could still pop outta the woods anytime. There oughta be a after-war boot camp, so somebody could demonstrate that there was a thing called Not-War and that he was in it.
“Hey, you got cash for gas?” Buford asked when they pulled over at a gas station.
“No, suh,” Goose said.
“You got grass?”
Goose shook his head.
“Hmmh… hmm.” Buford said. He got out to pay for the gas hisself.
But Goose reckonized what that murmur meant. A Navy man can’t help hisself. Buford hoped Goose to pay up in cash, grass or ass. That’s how hitchhiking works out in the country.
But Goose don’t give up his bootyhole if he can help it, so when Buford returned, Goose said, “I’ll get’cha started, Buford. But if’n you go’n make me give up the bootyhole, lemme off right now.”
Buford made a dismissive snort. “I ain’t a niggruh,” he said. “I don’t wan’cha rear.” He unzipped his jeans and pulled out a long fat cock. He gave it a couple strokes, then leaned back in the driver’s seat the best he could while still steering the truck onto the highway.
“Sheeit,” Goose said as he wrapped one hand around Buford’s meaty cock. “You Navy men is all the same.” Goose leaned over and put his mouth upon Buford’s knob. It twitched against Goose’s lips when Buford laughed.
“Army is jealous cuz a sailor’s dick do work,” Buford said. He put his left hand upon Goose’s head to push it deeper on his shaft, while his right hand stayed upon the steering wheel. “Ship got no place for a limp dick. Send ’em to the Army!” He cackled. “Or the Marines, I don’t vouch for them.”
Goose made some mouthy noises to communify that he disagreed with Buford’s as to regarding the Army, but he ain’t stop slurping and also don’t dispute the Marine Corps’s reputation. He don’t welch. Goose do what he gotsto. He done so numberous times before, and he likeish would again.
In any case, he know how to get a man going. He commenced to batter Buford’s knobtip with his tongue, and he slicked his lips up and down the shaft. Lotta fellers don’t realize jackin’ a man off with ya tongue is the same as doing it with ya hands — you don’t gotta taste it longer than it takes, just move ya lips up and down same as you would ya hand. If a man’s dick works, it’ll happen quick as candy.
Sure enough, Buford got to leaking prenut in no time. When Goose tasted it, he pulled off, but he kept stroking it with one hand. T’was called ‘starting it off’. Leastways that was what they called it in the Army. Navy prolly calls it ‘e’ry morn’ b’fore breakfast’! They do that, they do be like that. Never get put in the brig on a Navy base, or you gonna taste more meat than a vulture, Goose learnt that good. He learnt that like math.
Buford held onto his head, jabbing at his face and trying a-force Goose to put it back in his mouth. Goose did plant his tongue upon the tip a couple times to mollify Buford, but the taste of pre-jizz got him gagging, qualmish. Buford couldn’t tussle with his head too much while steering, ‘specially once he got close to busting a nut.
Stroking Buford’s dingus fast as a badger, Goose got both hands upon it. His left hand worked the shaft, and his right hand squeezed the base. Buford’s dick was big enough to accommodate both hands. The precum flowed like wine, lubing up Goose’s mitts.
“Ah, wait, wait, here I go, wait, shit…” Buford sucked in his breath. His cock went throbby-lobby like an alien beast, and Goose hurried his rhythm. Buford grunted like it hurt. “Wait, ah, shit, wait, got it, shit-” He cut his own self off with a hiss.
A fat spurt of jizz came outta his dick, jetting into the air and landing back in his hairy crotch. Goose ain’t stop stroking, even when his hand was coated in ackempucky. He kept working Buford’s meat up and down till his balls was good and drained. Cum got all the way up Goose’s arm to his bicep, but he ain’t miss a beat.
Buford’s dick roped limply in Goose’s left hand even before plopping out one final wad of fatness, but Goose leggo with his right hand. Buford was still making noises, whole body contorting, his veiny shaft still throbbing. Then at last Buford sighed and twitched, and a few final drops dribbled into Goose’s grip.
Goose leggo. He wiped up the gom with a napkin, while Buford tucked his man-meat away and redid his jeans with one hand. His other hand stayed on the wheel.
“A Navy man j’st can’t help hisself,” Goose said with a chuckle and a mournful whistle. “You know you ain’t gotta get a man to jerk ya meat? You can stick it in a woman.”
Buford laughed and countered that Goose’s face was ugly as pussy, which worked on two levels, then he turned up the volume on the eight-track. That calypso jangled out bright and clear. Goose liked that. T’was good music to whisk off unthoughted, its lively beat like a river’s current carrying Goose away to benighted shores, and the best part was that it don’t sound nothing like Vietnam.