Accepting Thanksgiving

This time the dream started earlier, when everything was good. He was in Marine Captain Buzz Thompson's office at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan's Helmand Province. The captain looked around to see if anyone else was in view, and, when he saw no one else was there, he pulled Marty into a supply room, pushed the young Marine to the floor, opened his fly, and presented his cock for sucking. Marty's dream of that day didn't usually start this early—when it was still all good. Buzz was a hunk and a half and took care of Marty. Marty took care of the captain too, giving him blow jobs on the fly and lying down and opening his legs for the officer when they had the opportunity.

Floating through Marty's mind as he dozed in the train steaming its way from Chicago toward Libertyville—toward home—was that it was the guy on the platform at the Chicago train station who must have made Marty horny and thus able to start this consuming dream earlier than usual. Marty and the guy on the platform had exchanged knowing looks.

It was all good still in the dream. Buzz, in full erection induced by Marty's attentions, was pulling Marty up, unbuckling his belt, pulling his fatigues down and turning him, belly over boxes. Marty was panting as Buzz knelt behind him, burying his face between Marty's butt cheeks. Marty moaned, the sound resonating through his brain, as the hulking Marine captain rose, bent over Marty's back, mounted and penetrated him, and began the stretch of the thick cock. There was no sensation of feel in the dream, but Marty could remember how it had felt. He gasped, panted, and groaned . . . and came awake to the feel of the train clipping along on the uneven rails and the slight lurching in the train car.

But that wasn't the only feeling he awakened too. Hands were gripping his knees as he sat in the sparsely occupied coach car. The hands had spread his legs. He looked down at his crotch, seeing and feeling that the dream had made him hard. He could see the line of his erection inside the stretched material of his denim jeans. A wet spot evidenced that he'd been having a wet dream—much better than the dream he'd been having for weeks—the one that went further than this one of Buzz and him at Camp Leatherneck that day.

Sitting across from Marty, in the facing seat of the dimly lit coach, and leaning into him, his hands gripping and separating Marty's knees, was the cowboy from the train platform at the Chicago train station. They'd only shared a look then, but it was amazing how little it took to establish that guys were players—and that one of them was dominant and the other a submissive. Later, as they'd passed each other between cars, they'd rubbed bodies together in passing, the cowboy had smiled and sent Marty an air kiss, while his hand brushed across Marty's crotch, and Marty, caught by surprise and with defenses down, had smiled back at the cowboy. In the field, he'd responded this way to soldiers who knew what he was willing to do, and he'd just reacted naturally to the cowboy's overture. This revealed all to the other man, though.

The cowboy was a dominant. It's surprising how quickly and completely the control can be attained when one man grips the knees of another, sitting, man and spreads his legs. If the other man is a submissive, he can be easily dominated this way. Marty was a submissive.

The man wasn't young, like twenty-two-year-old Marty Parsons was. He was probably in his forties—tall, gaunt, with a weather-beaten craggy-featured face and strong, heavily callused hands, now gripping and separating Marty's legs. The cowboy impression was conveyed by the faded-checked chambray shirt covered by a brown-leather fringed vest, on top of faded jeans and fancy-tooled cowboy boots. It was all topped by a ten-gallon hat. He was a real cowboy—the real McCoy rancher. He was directly out of central casting as the steely foreman backing up a rough and greedy ranch owner in a Western movie.

Giving Marty a piercing sneery sort of smile, the cowboy reached over with one of his hands and traced Marty's erection through the taut material on his jeans.

"You gave me the look in Chicago," he said. "The look of want. I knowed what you wanted. You gonna be easy? I'm not gonna work for it. Yes or no?"

"Yes," Marty whispered.

"Yes what?"

"I'm going to be easy."

The man's thumb paused at the wet spot. The thumb went from there to Marty's mouth, which involuntarily opened to it, and Marty gave the thumb suck. The cowboy's other hand took one of Marty's hands and moved it to the man's crotch. Marty found the cowboy was hard under the material of his jeans as well. Marty traced the thickness and length of the cowboy's cock. He moaned, the ache and need in him extending from the dream into reality. The cowboy had sensed the younger man's ache and need—probably from the moment their eyes at met on the Chicago train station platform.

"You just back from fightin'," he asked.

"Back from Afghanistan, yes."

"You gave it up to a lot of soldiers out there, didn't you? You have that pretty boy look to you."

"Some, yes."

"You'll give it to me. You miss it from out there. You ain't had it good since Afghanistan, have you? You want it bad. You want a man's man to lay down for."

"Yes." The bald talk was arousing. Marty had had even this much since Afghanistan.

The cowboy rose, looked down at Marty for a long minute, capturing the younger man's eyes, conveying where this was headed. "You want it, come and get it," he growled in a gravelly voice.

He turned and walked to the end of the coach, where the door to the bathroom was. He paused there for a moment, looking back at Marty. Then he opened the bathroom compartment door and went in. After a moment Marty stood; looked around to ensure no one was watching in the dimly lit, sparsely occupied coach; went, hobbling a bit, to the end of the train car; and, looking around again, opened the bathroom compartment door and went in. The compartment was small, not really big enough for two men to stand in unless they were being intimate.

Marty and the cowboy became intimate. There was a brief few moments of being in the clutch, kissing and hands frantically unbuckling and unzipping the other, unleashing and stroking each other's cocks. The cowboy dominated, controlling it all. At length, he pushed Marty down to sitting on the toilet, forced his cock into Marty's mouth, and leaned over him, palming the wall behind the toilet, as he swayed back and forth, coordinated with the swaying of the moving train, fucking the younger man's face. Marty went with it, conjuring up Captain Buzz and the storage room in his mind, weaving the present in with the pleasant part of that fateful day.

"Stand up. Turn around. Gonna fuck you. Gonna fuck you good, pretty-boy bitch," the cowboy growled in a commanding tone. "Platoon's punch is gonna be my bitch now. You like talking like that, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Spread 'em and take my dick."

Fighting to stay in his dream, Marty stood and leaned over the toilet, palming the wall, as the cowboy had done while Marty was giving him head. There wasn't much possible in terms of spreading his legs, but he knew it had just been dirty talk.

Marty felt his jeans and briefs being jerked down to puddle around his ankles. He moaned as he heard the crinkle of the condom being rolled onto the cock, and then gave a little cry, gasped, and began to pant as the cock head worried his hole.

"Gimme that hole. Open up, you fucker," the cowboy barked, and then he grunted and Marty groaned as the cowboy worked hard to get inside. Once in, one of the cowboy's callused hands palmed Marty's lower belly and the other cupped the young man's chin, pulling his head back into the cowboy's hard chest, and the rhythmic pumping gauged to harmonize with the movement of the train over the rough tracks, settled into the cadence of the fuck.

"You like it like this. You done this a lot, ain't you?"

"Yes."

Marty's mind went back to the supply room at Camp Leatherneck and Captain Buzz holding him in the same position and fucking him. The cowboy's hand moved from Marty's belly to grasping and stroking the young man's cock. Marty came first; the cowboy several strokes later. The grip on Marty's body was released, and he was allowed to collapse onto the toilet, the spent condom landing on the floor next to him, as the cowboy jerked up his briefs and jeans, zipped and buckled up, and, without so much as a "Thank you, ma-am," was gone from the bathroom compartment.

Marty lingered, collapsed over the toilet, his half-dozed dream free now to move into the later stages, to the nightmare Marty had been reliving for weeks—to the horror of what happened later that day—at the camp, in Afghanistan.

He didn't see the cowboy again for the remainder of the journey. He didn't really want to see him again. He was embarrassed that he'd needed it so badly—that he'd been so easy. But he couldn't forget it, going over the encounter in his mind again and again, letting it force his dreams of Captain Buzz and the supply room out of his mind. Before the journey was over, he was back in the small bathroom again where they'd done it, pulling his cock out, stroking it, and reliving what the cowboy had done to him.

* * * *

Marty spied his parents, standing in four inches of mid-November snow, on the depot platform at Fairfield, Iowa, as the train stopped there. It wouldn't linger long here. Fairfield, a farming town of some ten-thousand inhabitants, barely rated a train stop. Conveniently for the Parsons family, though, it was just four miles to the northeast from their farm near the much smaller town of Libertyville, where the family grew corn and soybeans and raised hogs. Marty hadn't told his parents, Muriel and Walt, who had farmed their land, as did two generations before them all of their lives, that when he'd joined the Marines, he hadn't intended to come back here ever again.

And yet here he was, the only slightly hobbling wounded, most of his wounds being where they couldn't be seen. The two of them looked so hopeful standing on the platform, though, that he wanted to cry. Marine or not, there had been considerable times in the last four months that he'd cried. Those still back at Camp Leatherneck doubtless were happy to see him go. He'd served out his eighteen months, but he didn't reup, which he'd fully expected to do before that day Buzz died.

Muriel took a step toward him and opened her arms when she saw him step down from the train. His father stood back, but Marty saw that he was trembling. He had to take about ten steps to get to them and he saw his mother look down to see how well he could walk, but the worry lines melted when she saw that there wasn't much of a shuffle in his steps at all. The worst part had been coming down metal steps from the train carriage.

"It's good to have you home again," his father said as they stood on the platform briefly, embracing. Muriel didn't seem to be able to form words. She just kept touching her boy to assure herself that he was there and in one piece. They had, of course, known that Marty had been in a gate guard shack at his Afghanistan base when the Taliban launched a small attack on the gate and that his captain, who Marty had written about, had died in the attack and Marty was slightly wounded, but they had no idea how badly Marty had been affected by the experience. There had been a change in his letters after that and he hadn't signed on for another tour as he'd told them he was going to do—and that they done everything they could to dissuade him from doing without getting pushy about it. Their dream was for him to return and take over the farm.

Now it seemed like he might be doing that—but how broken was he? Would it be their son who was coming back—and how long would he stay? He'd been on edge and antsy for the two years after high school that he was farming with them.

All of them were tiptoeing around all of the primary topics they needed to discuss as they drove back to the farm, each of them grateful that it was only a fifteen-minute drive. What Marty needed was a good night's sleep. The questions could wait for the morning, and they could work into them gradually. Nothing had been put on a schedule beyond coming home on the train through Chicago. He'd been honorably discharged from the Marine Corps. No blame had been assigned to him in the Taliban attack. Buzz had died a hero. Nothing Marty had done that day had been brought into question. He hadn't rebounded mentally as they'd like a Marine to do and there had been rumors about the nature of him, but there was nothing to be openly said or done about that. They'd been careful not to speculate about Buzz. Buzz was a documented hero. Marty had served his time and his superiors hadn't pressed him to reup.

Marty did ask one question, though, as they pulled into the snow-swept farm yard.

"Who is that at the old house?" he asked.

"That's Frank Munoz. I'm sure your dad wrote you about him," Muriel answered. "Your dad's gotten to where the farm is too much for him to handle alone, even with my help. When you left, we needed help. Frank is Hablo and Susan's son. He needed work and a place to stay too. He's been with us—staying in the old homestead—for nearly a year now. He's a lot of help around the farm."

The old homestead building was the original two-bedroom bungalow on the farm that was across the farm yard from the three-bedroom brick rambler Marty's father and mother had built when they took over the farm. Having the old homestead had been handy for itinerant help that went through, and they'd offered it for Marty to live in on his own when he finished school. Before he'd gotten around to moving in, though, he'd enlisted in the Marines and taken off.

Ah, yes, they'd told him about taking Frank on, and he'd seen that as a godsend. He hadn't wanted to come back to farm but he'd felt guilty about that. And he knew about Frank and why he needed someplace to land with not too many people in the community willing to help him. It had been quite a fall for the sports hero four years ahead of Marty in school from the pedestal the community had put Frank on and then jerked out from underneath him when they found out what his preferences were—what his nature was. It was knowing how Frank had been treated that had decided Marty that he had to get away from here and not come back. Marty hadn't been the hometown idol Frank had been. Of course, that meant Frank had farther to fall from that pedestal.

But here Marty was, back. But for how long? And what else was there out there for Marty? When would his nerves quiet down—and that dream go away?

The dream was back that night, and it started where it had left off, with Captain Buzz fucking Marty in the supply room off his office. It had been a rough fuck, though. The captain had been angry. Marty only found out why after they left the supply closet.

"You've been giving it out to others," Buzz had growled. From there the dream that was as much reality as a dream had picked up again, with the captain yelling at Marty in a haze where there was no sound but somehow the words came through. Buzz would show Marty. He'd punish him so Marty wouldn't go under anyone but the captain. Marty would stand dangerous duty for a while so he'd appreciate how the captain coddled him. Marty was hustled out to the main gate, where he jolly well could stand guard for a shift and see how dangerous it was for some guys. And dangerous it was. Marty tried to stop the dream or change it—or wake up—but he was forced to relive it in a nightmare all over again. The captain thrusting a rifle in Marty's hands, but still so angry that he punched Marty in the face when they were just outside the guard shack, and Marty went down at the precise moment that all hell broke out and the firing began. Captain Buzz landed on top of Marty and, mercifully, the dream let loose its grip on Marty again and he woke in a sweat and heavy panting.

The citation said that Buzz had covered Marty—one of his guys—on purpose. And maybe he did. But up to that point he'd been mad at Marty and showing it. And there was no time, really, between Buzz not being aware of any danger and Buzz being hit and falling on Marty.

Marty got out of bed and went over to the window. He never could go right back to sleep after that dream, which wasn't really a dream. He rustled around in the dark and pulled out a pack of cigarettes—another bad habit he knew he had to build up the courage to drop—and leaned into the window frame and looked out onto the snow-covered fields of his family farm under the moonlight. It all looked so pristine now. He knew how messy farming could get, though, in the Iowa mud. Sitting on the wide sill inside the frame of the window, he bent the leg toward the window and pressed his knee to the glass.

He looked over at the homestead house. Lights were still on there, and he saw the silhouette figure of a man at the bungalow window, leaning into the window frame, and looking out. The moving dot of red told Marty that Frank was smoking a cigarette too. Marty could almost make out the man's muscular backlit body. If he was wearing anything, it certainly didn't show. Marty wasn't wearing anything either. It seemed impolite that he could see Frank framed in the window and maybe Frank couldn't see him. He left briefly to turn on the overhead light and then settled back into the window frame, took a puff on his cigarette, arched his head back, and exhaled the smoke toward the ceiling.

Frank Munoz, the Hispanic half breed, a Mexican father and a mother who was a local white girl he'd knocked up and married when he'd been in the area as a seasonal harvester. The community had let them stay but it was only families like the Parsons who had been social with them and had given them help in the hard times. It wasn't until their son, Frank, handsome as the devil, excelled in all sports in high school that the family was accepted in the community. And then Frank had gone bent, and it had all crashed down again.

Frank. Beautiful Frank. Mart had idolized him just as the rest of the community had done—but for different reasons then they did. When Frank crashed, Marty knew it was time to get out—not because they'd done anything; they'd barely known each other—but Marty knew if Frank would get that response from the community, Marty didn't have a chance to come out here.

So, he'd joined the Marines. And he'd made a dead hero out of the Marine officer who had been fucking him.

He sat in the window frame, smoking and looking at the old homestead, for a good twenty minutes. Across the farmyard, Frank remained at the old homestead window, smoking and looking at the newer, brick farmhouse for even longer than that. Halfway through his vigil, he took his cock in hand and masturbated. Looking over at the old homestead, he thought he could see Frank doing the same—and that they came at nearly the same time.

* * * *

"So, this Captain Thompson saved your life?" Marty's mother said. The two of them—mother and son—were sitting at the bay window in the dining room of the brick rambler farmhouse, where Muriel had served her boy a big breakfast at what was well past lunchtime on a farm, even in the winter. They had let Marty sleep in as long as he needed to on his first night home from his Afghanistan deployment. They weren't going to make any demands at all of him. They were just happy he was alive and here. He only now was beginning to open up and address the questions that had been building.

As he ate and began to respond to the questions, Marty looked out of the window, which faced the farmyard bordered by the barn, the equipment shed, the old homestead house, and, on this side, the newer brick farmhouse. His father and the hired hand, Frank Munoz, were already out—indeed, had been out, working, for hours—in the farmyard. Marty's eyes followed Frank's movements more than his fathers. As Marty remembered him, Frank was a hunk, having inherited all of the attractive aspects of his Mexican father and Scandinavian-origin mother and none of the bad, as far as appearances held. Once having established his nature, Frank hadn't had any trouble at all finding willing sex partners in the community. He wouldn't have had any more trouble finding women to cover as he did young men. As Marty's own self-awareness was developing, he'd had designs on going under the sports hero four years ahead of him in school, but nothing had come of that.