***************************************************************** This author's e-mail has changed to: khyber@citizensofgravity.com ***************************************************************** From: Khyber Date: Sat, 24 Apr 1999 16:37:37 GMT Subject: NEW--"Eldorado Bones" by Khyber (V,A, Skinner, PG13) "Eldorado Bones" by Khyber Khyber@nucleus.com CLASSIFICATION: V,A RATING: PG13 for language and mature themes. SUMMARY: Old times and old friends. ARCHIVING: Gossamer and Ephemeral OK, all others please ask by email. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Annie, Alanna, and Sabine have all liked this so far and told me to find something to do with it :) Notes: This vignette has been hovering around since late summer 1998 looking for a place in "Sokol," and I never could find one, and Sokol's storyline doesn'y have any more places to try and wedge it in. I really like it, though, so I decided to post it like this. "Sokol" and the rest of my stories can be found at: http://www.alanna.net/Khyber *** Eldorado Bones by Khyber Somewhere in West Virginia A Sunday in May, 1998 "You're still driving that thing, Chek?" Walter Skinner gestured out at the '73 Eldorado sitting in the long rural driveway like a buffed, waxed dinosaur flaunting chrome for extinct mates. "Just for the special occasions, Walt. I keep it at the place in Florida in the winters. I can't believe you've got one of those bagless whatevers, Neons... you been out of the Marines too long..." "Maybe, Chek." Skinner took a long pull off his beer. Straight from the bottle, bitter and familiar. He took an odd pleasure in the idea that across the United States this summer afternoon hundreds if not thousands of porches had fiftyish men sitting on the porch drinking the same beer as he was, making the same comments about the upcoming ballgame and talking cars. For the time, he was one of them. He'd known Mike Wolociszek since their second tour of duty in 1971, another young lieutenant in the Corps with plenty of fresh blood on his hands and no clear idea of how to wash it off except with as much whiskey as possible. They'd met while doing their sworn duty to drink Saigon dry over the course of a five-day leave, and repeated the experience several times. Chek had stuck around in the darker leftovers of the war a few years longer than Walt, "advising" in Laos and Thailand as the last remnants of old imperialism tried to take as many farmers and students with them as possible. "You remember when we were driving to Vegas that time in '75, and you realised that we were completely out of beer...?" "Only reason I remember that drive is that I still have that picture of you in the fountain outside that chapel." Chek had drifted through the operational end of military intelligence when Walt paid himself out of the Corps and joined the Bureau. They'd drank hard together, got too old for it together, and watched the world they'd walked tall and cocky in speed into a blur as they spent more and more time behind desks. It had been nearly a year since they'd waited for the game to start out on Nick Kontos' porch while Nick and Archie and their wives filled the living room with talk of vacations and near-grown children. "No really, Walt, when was the last time you went fishing? Y'know, deep-sea, the Hemingway thing like we did in Florida last time." "First thing I'd sunburn now is my scalp." "Ah, you know what they say, you're not losing your hair, you're getting more head. You should, Walt, hell, we both should..." "Keeping you busy at Suitland?" Chek was in naval intelligence, at a high enough level that people around him started to refer to themselves as "the community". "Yeah, you know how it is, Walt, you get to a certain point where it was supposed to all start making sense and all that happens is that you're still getting orders and they make less sense." Chek seemed to look for his own reflection in the grill of the Caddy a long first down away. "Corridors of power, I guess... We don't elect 'em, we don't draft 'em, but they're there." He turned back to Skinner. "Anyway, Walt, please tell me you're looking like you haven't slept in a week because you've got a 25-year-old secretary who's keeping you up all afternoon." Skinner laughed for a minute. "No, Chek, I've got sort of a ...human resources... problem that's starting to get really out of hand." "What, she wants the evenings too?" Chek's eyes across his upturned beer gave Walt the okay to unload a little. "I have two agents-long partnership, good six years, basically a whole unit to themselves. Really hell-and-back stuff, a lot of it classified, they've been through a lot." Skinner leaned back in his chair, hearing his voice tell the story for the first time himself. "No spouses, no families. I'm actually surprised it took this long for them to start sleeping together." "I'm an old man, if this isn't a guy and a gal please don't tell me the rest of the story." Chek could make him laugh through the worst things. He'd never take away the bottle if you really needed it, but he wouldn't let you drink alone. "Yeah, Chek, I wouldn't want to know myself. It's... They're doing really important work. The Bureau needs them. Hell, the country needs them. But they've been on their own too long." "Starting to freelance?" "One of them's always been like that. Da-the other's just as bad now, maybe worse. They've had protection from upstairs for a long time, but not anymore and they're taking a lot of risks, bureaucratic and otherwise." "You boys running dry out here?" Nick Kontos leaned a thick, balding head out the front screen door, holding up two more beers in one big hand. Chek reached over. "Nicky, you are *the* host, I tell you." Screw-tops didn't exist in Chek's world, the bottle opener on top of his keys coming out for yet another tour of duty. "They think they're unbustable?" "They've been busted right out of their section already, twice, and they basically just ignored it. They're good me- good people, Chek, some of the best I've got. The work they're doing needs to be done in the worst way, but not like this..." He accepted the fresh beer. Looks like I'm staying for breakfast, he thought. Been a few years for that. "I can watch one man kill himself if he's really damn determined to do it. Two's harder." His thumbnail idly scratched at the corner of the label on the bottleneck. "These two love each other, Chek. I don't know. That counts for something to me. It's something you want to protect." Mike Wolociszek had leaned back in his chair, and was studying a spot of color in Nick's wife's flowerbed through the far porch railing. "Walt, just..." The swig from the beer was automatic, a punctuation mark. "I didn't need to hear this story, Walt. Sometimes things are hard enough." They had been in a bar in Saigon once, back to back, debating an issue of apparent importance with seven or eight Army engineers, knuckles getting steadily bloodier for the Corps. Chek wasn't the only person Walter Skinner had ever turned his back on with trust, but it was a short list getting shorter. "Aw, Jesus, Chek." His friend didn't look up as Walt exhaled deeply and stood up, feeling only a slight beery dizziness that the evening air would rapidly clear. He started walking down the porch steps. "Nick and Arch and the girls, just... give them my regards." About half way down the gravel walk, he turned around. Nick had a beautiful house, something old at the base, continually laboured on and renewed, something he'd built on and held. Walt's old friend watched him from his chair, beer dangling between his knees in loose fingers. "Chek?" "Mm-hm?" "That Caddy of yours... if I looked in the ashtray, Chek, what would I find?" "Bones, Walt, bones and more bloody fucking bones." *** the end feedback to khyber@nucleus.com