The old man moved slowly on the sidewalk in the park, the smooth, steady shuffle that ate up distance, if not quickly, at least ate it up. His target was a bench there, one which would catch the afternoon rays of the sun. It was quiet, it was little used, it was, as much as any public fixture could be, his very own.
The leaves were just beginning to fall. They had turned, scarely a single bit of green was left in the canopies, but they were still full. Trees now full of red, orange, yellow leaves, flashes of color that flew and flashed like so much confetti strewn about at a wedding or a festival, glittering pieces of light that beckoned you to travel into the next world. Come, they seemed to say, this is not a parting but a journey to another realm, this is not a time of grief, this is a time of joy. Join us, laugh with us, love us as we love you!
The old man settled into the bench with little difficulty, he had to remain perched on the edge of it, resting part of his weight upon his cane, for his back was curved far over and his neck depended not from the top of his body any longer, but the side. This left his neck a wrinkled length of turkey neck, his eyes peered ahead of him with an intensity. He was expecting it, knowing it would come, as it always had.
Two men rushed in from the bushes to either side, their faces grimed with battle, their uniforms filthy and unkempt, for these were men who had been fighting for some weeks without adequate rest, without facilities to wash themselves or their clothing, where a bath was to find a pool of some kind and dunk in, where washing was to slosh them around and wring them dry as you could, and even then, you often had to put on damp clothes. So these men smelled, no doubt about it, a rank goatish smell that would curl up inside your nostrils for hours afterward.
But neither of these young men noticed it, they'd been at each other's sides too long, the smell was a part of them.
The old man listened to them, he knew every word, hearing it as though it were yesterday.
"Flushed them out, didn't we?" the blond-haired one said. He was a bit older, a bit stronger, a bit more in authority.
"Got all the Jerries out of that French town, all right." the other man said. And the old man smiled as he heard that. Yes, they had cleared the town of the Germans that day in the autumn of 1944. The town had turned out after the battle, which had been cursory and more a fighting withdrawal than a true clash. The townspeople hadn't had much, but what they had, they had shared. The GI's in their turn had been liberal with their ration packs, what American wouldn't trade dehydrated beef and dessicated stew for fresh baked bread and fine French wine?
"Looks like we'll be in Berlin about Christmas if this keeps up." the blond man observed.
The other man sniffed audibly. "Hell, Gilbert, you know they aren't going to keep caving. They're just drawing back their lines so they can contain us." He lit and drew a drag from a cigarette. "The Rhine makes a hell of a good barrier if nothing else. And I doubt the Maginot Line is any easier from this side than the other."
"The other man drew another meditative pull from his cigarette, blew it out slowly. "I hope to hell they don't send us that way."
"We'll go whichever way they send us."
"Still, I think this is all too damned easy. The Jerries are up to something, I say."
"You worry too much, Atwood." the blond man said.
"Hey, I plan to go home after this is all over with!" Atwood responded. "What about you, Gilbert? What are your plans?"
"I don't make plans." Gilbert said. "Man's a fool to make plans with a war going. Time enough for that when you're done."
"You're a pessimist, Gilbert."
"You're a dreamer, Atwood." Gilbert retorted. "You plan to dream your whole life away?"
"Just might." Atwood said. "Beats what you got going."
"How do you know what I got going?"
"I know you, well as any man knows another. Hell, we've been in enough foxholes together. You got a secret I don't know about, I'm going to be damned surprise."
"You'd be real surprised what you don't know."
"Oh, no I wouldn't be surprised. Not one bit. Just try me and you'll see."
"Okay, then, how about this?" Gilbert's hand came up and landed on Atwood's inner thigh.
The old man leaned forward, regarding the scene eagerly. Every edge was imprinted on his mind, clear as it could be. The years hadn't faded it the way it had so many other things.
Atwood regarded this intrusion less than three inches from his manhood with calm equanimity. "What do you say about this?"
"Not a bit surprised." Atwood said.
Gilbert's hand traveled up and cupped Atwood's basket. "You surprised yet?"
"Not me."
"You even understand what I'm about to do to you, Atwood?"
The old man leaned forward and lipped Atwood's words along with him, in perfect synchronization.
"Understand? Hell, why you think I've been sticking next to you all this time? Come and get me!"
Gilbert rolled up and onto Atwood and the old man watched the young men holding each other. Such things happened in wartime, far more than anyone ever mentioned. There had been a trust established among your men, all of them. You knew them, trusted them, loved them....and if that love went further now and then, well, whose business was that? In wartime, such a thing was a mere picadillo, and officers considered it more a thing to be brushed under the carpet with a cautionary warning than with any actual punitive charges.
So these two men, two men who had fought beside each other, lived alongside each other, guarded each other, protected each other, trusted each other utterly, expressed that trust in this way, and here, now, in this situation, and the old man watched it all, knowing each move, anticipating it, savoring it as it came, not rushing any part of it, God, it was so sweet, so sweet!
And he watched as Gilbert took command as he always did, Atwood groaning under him as Gilbert worked his lips upon the heavy shadow of beard, watched as Gilbert's hands undid Atwood's belt buckle and removed it, saw the brawny arm dangle it like a cream-colored snake to one side and then drop it to coil among the leaves, then to pull the green pants down the pale flesh, exposing legs before being balked at the boots, he solved this by pulling off one boot whose shoelaces were in horrible disrepair (laces suffered much in wartime and were impossible to replace), and then pulled the pants over that leg and left them at that.
"You ready now for me?" Gilbert growled as he undid his own pants.
"Born ready." Atwood affirmed. "Make me grunt like those whores back in Paris did."
"They were grunting because I was too fucking big for them." Gilbert claimed impudently. "They were used to tiny little French dicks, not a big American dong like mine!"
"Yeah, it takes an American hole to handle an American pud." Atwood agreed with the blithe naivete of the soldier, partisan in all things as befit their esprit de corps.
The old man watched greedily as Gilbert spat in his palm, greased up his pud. It was all as he remembered it, exactly so, right up to where Gilbert, his prick gleaming in the sunlight that shot through a hole in the leaf canopy, aimed it at Atwood's butt. "You ready for this?" He asked again.
"Yeah, come on, shove it up me!" Atwood growled. "Drive it in me, you horny fucker, drive it in good, yeah, shit, yeah!"
Atwood wasn't silent as Gilbert rammed it into his buddy's butt, he yodeled out in a manner that should have alerted everyone for a mile around...only there wasn't anybody else around. Just the old man...and he didn't count, watching all of this. The two men could make all the noise they wanted.
And Atwood did. "Aw-w-w-w-w-w-w-w, yeahhhhhh!" he groaned out. "Uhh-uh-uhh-uhhh-uhhh!" And that was Gilbert sending that prong all the way to the hilt.
The old man shivered, the sensations were so intense, even after all this time, even here and now, watching it all again, he could feel the power of that moment, as Gilbert drove that dong deep between Atwood's quivering buttocks and inside his tumbling bowels, and Atwood keened anew as Gilbert withdrew that shimmering scimitar of maleness, then plunged it in again.
Atwood clutched and clawed at Gilbert, his roughed, dirty, broken-nailed fingers clutching desperately at the green covered back.
"Aw, shit, yeah!" Gilbert snarled down at his pinioned lover. "Damn you, Atwood, you got such a sweet, hot ass! Fuck, yeah, I should'a been fucking your ass long ago."
"Yeah, come on, you horny bastard, fuck my ass but good!" Atwood growled back at him.
Two horny soldiers, raw in their lust and driven in their sexuality, and the old man their only witness. He saw the lithe buttocks of Gilbert rising and falling as they drove his pud into Atwood's ass, he saw Atwood's legs flailing in the air, then clamp down onto Gilbert's thighs and he was thrusting back at Gilbert, the two caught up in a symphony of rut that, even had they had witnesses, they wouldn't have cared at that point.
And the old man watched them, his eyes beginning to tear up as he saw them reaching their climax, the paired bodies thrusting with more intensity, so that they were no longer moving in smooth motions, but hard jerking thrusts, puncuated at contact each time, unk, unk, unk, unk!
Atwood came first, and he howled and his jizz splattered both himself and Gilbert, staining their already-stained undershirts with hot, white jism. And he clawed at Gilbert as he came, and Gilbert arched his back, threw his head back even further, so that he was bent like a bow over Atwood, and his low, gutteral groan was the loosing of the arrow from that bow, for he gave out that long, single sound, then he collapsed inwards and down, falling on his lover, and they were a jumbled mass of groaning, interlocked men, sweating and swearing under their breaths as they recovered from their ordeal of ejaculation.
The old man watched them gently, and had to reach up to wipe a tear from his eye as he watched the two soldiers get dressed. Yes, that was how it had been. He had remembered it all, and remembered it well.
"Grandpa, Grandpa!" came the call. The old man swiveled and saw the two sparkling little girls run to him, their nanny behind them. He looked at the tree one more time, but no trace of the two soldiers remained...of course.
He held open his arms and his granddaughters dove into them and they hugged him. "Grandpa, why were you crying?"
"Is something wrong, Mr. Atwood?" the nanny asked him. For her, it was the search for encroaching senility.
"No, I'm fine." he told her, told his daughters.
"Were you lonely waiting for us, Grandpa?" his older granddaughter said as they scampered around him as he shuffled back.
"No, baby." he said as he looked back at the tree, the falling leaves sparkling in the sun. "I wasn't lonely. I never get lonely these days. I have my memories to keep me company."