Ex-Rats

While Kerri was hugging Di and J.T., asking after Meagan, Marty and Shauna's younger daughter, asking when we'd see all the grandkids, I ambled up to my corn-shucking friend. "Hey, ya boozebag, how ya been?" Such was my usual greeting to Marty.

"Been better; been worse," my old shipmate replied. "Gettin' any these days?" He suddenly began coughing while Shauna lightly whacked his back.

I smiled just a little, then turned to grab a hug from Diane, like her mother, a drop-dead gorgeous redhead, and to give Jay a hearty handshake. I nodded a tiny nod toward Marty and both just shrugged.

Turning back again, I noticed that Marty's left eye drooped a bit and he seemed to have a little difficulty grasping the ear of corn he was working on. Otherwise, I fantasized that my buddy appeared to be in decent enough shape. Seemed he'd dropped a good bit of weight though, which I didn't like.

While Kerri was busy chatting with Diane and Jay, I reached for my Marlboros, shook one out and offered the pack to Marty. He looked to Shauna, saw those green eyes flash, and said "No thanks. I don't do them friggin' things any more." Another fit of coughing.

I checked to make sure Kerri was still tied up with Di, and responded "Yeah, I oughtta quit myself, but, what the hell, they're my only vice."

After a few more minutes of yakking and laughing, Diane told us that they had to relieve the sitter, said they'd be around with the kids, along with Meaghan and her brood, the next day. With more hugs and backslapping all around, and a lingering embrace for her dad, she and J.T. headed out to their Jimmy sport ute.

"Got some Southern Comfort in the suitcase, if you're interested," I told Marty as we watched Diane and her husband leave in a cloud of summer dust.

"Goddamn skunk-piss," he retorted, as always. "There's some genuine Montana moonshine in the kitchen cabinet; how's 'bout you pour us both a snort."

I glanced over at Shauna, who shrugged and rolled her eyes. That was good enough for me. "I really do hope they've discovered ice in this cow-infested shithole," I said, heading inside for a couple of glasses and some of Marty's Old Grand Dad. I paused at the door, looked to Kerri and Shauna. "You ladies drinkin' with us?" Both women glanced toward each other and burst out laughing.

"Hell, yeah," Shauna said with that stunning grin. It was just like old times.

I remembered sitting with Marty on an ammo box at the stern of the boat while he stared with adoring eyes at the woman whom he'd eventually marry. We'd just inveigled the girls to fire the .50-caliber machine guns mounted at each stern quarter, had finally finished kicking the spent shell casings over the side. Shauna and Kerri were lazing, naked and beautiful, on the engine compartment cover beneath the shade of the canvas awning.

Each displayed an enchanting sex; the one Italianate dusky and bounteously erotic, the other alluringly alabaster and subtly sensuous.

I recalled Kerri flaunting her enticingly pink labia, allowing it to peek occasionally from between her lushly shrouded mound (trimmed at the time only enough to prevent embarrassment from those curly pubes dangling from the sides of panties or bikini bottoms). The well-defined hood shielding her pink clitoris nestled mid this dewy slit, while her plump pussy lips parted to reveal a gloriously honeyed tunnel that I had already found to be enchantingly welcoming.

Not as heavily pubed as Kerri, whose dark hair bloomed lushly at both head and crotch, Shauna flaunted her crack from a lithe mons that allowed her sizeable clitoris, also pink and pretty, to poke invitingly from between her pussy lips. She was, to put it bluntly, the essence of sexuality without even trying.

When this lovely redhead bent her leg to get more comfortable, her swollen love-lips parted to reveal her oh-so-delicate, yet so awesomely promising path in a way that was both shameless and innocent.

No wonder Marty'd been smitten. But the hell of it was, Shauna had been smitten, as well. I'll always recall the look that passed between them at that precise moment, and I realized at that moment, as well, what true love, what selfless, uninhibited, all consuming love was all about.

And as I headed in to get the booze, I couldn't help but think, based on Kerri's still-enchanting vaginal region, that Shauna looked pretty much the same down there yet.

With an inaudible "Oh yeah", I marched into the kitchen to fix some cocktails. Locating a platter above the stove, I toted the drinks back to the porch where I found Shauna and Kerri teary-eyed, clinging fiercely to Marty. Shit, I thought to myself, that's not good.

"Hey, man," I said to Marty. "What's up?"

Marty gave me a quick glance, looked toward the mountains off to the west, old Mossback the nearest at just four miles away. "Little bit of bad news at the hospital yesterday," he replied. "Seems they think I might have lung cancer. I sorta forgot to tell Shauna till just now."

"Goddammit, Demarest, you're not gonna die on me," Shauna cried.

I carefully placed the drinks on a small, round table and, to get my head together, began passing them around. Of course, everyone got the wrong one, so we spent a few minutes straightening that out. By then, I'd figured out how to respond. "You 'sorta forgot,' huh?"

"Yep," was all Marty would say.

"So what're you going to do?" Kerri asked this probably knowing the answer better than Marty, having worked in oncology for going on twenty years now.

"Well," Marty replied, shifting a bit on his seat. "I'd guess it depends on the tests and whatever they decide for the damned treatments. That's if I do the goddamned treatments to start with . . ."

"Do the damned treatments?" Shauna screeched, cheeks wet and flushed. "Of course you're gonna do the damned treatments." Though out of nursing for nearly forty years now, Shauna knew as well as Kerri how desperate Marty's situation might be. She also knew how stubborn he was, how much he hated feeling poorly, and, of course, how she adored him. "You old shit, you'll do the damned treatments if I have to carry the beds and the needles and the drugs and the goddamned radiation machine home on my fucking back."

"There ain't no need to get all worked up," Marty said testily. "I'm seein' the friggin' doctor tomorrow," he looked toward Kerri and me, "and he'll poke around, do a few more tests, make sure nobody's gonna stroke out again, make sure I can pay for the goddamned stroke I just had, all that good shit. Hell, you know all the bullshit they do now 'fore any kind a' healin' shit happens . . ."

"Whoa," I said then. "A little slack on my sensitive ears, here." Needless to say, such language was commonplace among the four of us, but I could see a donnybrook brewing and wanted to remind everyone that Kerri and I were here to help, not just to bear witness or something. "Marty," I went on. "You've got one of the finest, prettiest women on the friggin' planet that goes to bed with you every damned night. I think you oughtta look to keeping things that way. And Shauna," I turned to face those crazy Irish eyes. "You got one hell of a good geezer here that needs a little bit of TLC. Maybe you might cut him some slack, let him feel sorry for himself just a little before we all stick him with enough needles that he looks like a goddamned voodoo doll."

Kerri looked at me with that inscrutable smile, while Shauna and Marty gave a glance to each other, then to me. Shauna finally said "Actually, that kind of makes sense."

After trying to figure out what I'd said, and how it could possibly make sense . . . whatever it was I said . . . I asked "When're you gonna tell the kids?"

"Tomorrow, after I hear what the doc has to say." Marty declared with a warning look to his pointedly pouting wife. "Meantime, that's it. I don't want to hear anything else about the whole thing till we know just what's what. We got all kinds of vittles here. How 'bout some of us get down to cookin'." He eyed my nearly empty glass. "And Jimbo, why don't you start humpin' your bags and your Southern Comfort and such up to the house, get settled in for the night. And, by God, if you let that pretty little Eye-talian girl there so much as lift her little pinky finger to help you, I'll kick your ass right where you stand." He coughed harshly again.

Kerri Axelsson, nee Cavallieri, gave a nod to my corn-shucking friend, said placidly, "Martin, I so admire your way with that man."

I couldn't help but think as I walked down to the Land Cruiser: Lung cancer. Shit!

I also wondered what things might have been like had our pairings been reversed, had I ended up marrying Shauna and Marty wound up with Kerri.

Knowing Kerri's insidious eroticism, her brash confidence and her single-minded dedication to, well, anything that took her fancy, I decided that Marty would eventually have been overwhelmed by that same passion. Yet I continued to imagine his sizeable cock slithering, with much impassioned moaning and gasping, into, almost out of, then back into Kerri's so-welcoming crack, balls softly thwacking the crease of Kerri's so-stupendous bottom.

This has been a thing I've idly pondered over the course of our lengthy acquaintance, this imagining of my wife and my best friend entwined and sweating, engorged and grunting with near animal lust.

My own penis began to stir, so I exorcised such thoughts to concentrate on hauling the forty-nine pound suitcase, which cost me twenty-five dollars to have stowed in various aircraft on the flight out, and the two laptops, and the two carry-on bags, one weighing approximately four pounds, the other, approximately twenty pounds, including Kerri's hefty purse, up to the second floor guest room.

I did it all, by the way, myself. While all and sundry of my friends and family sat drinkin' and winkin' through the entirety of my ordeal. But I'm not a bitter man . . . usually. When everything was in its place, I fussily measured precise amounts of ice, SoCo and soda into a rather large glass, rejoined the others on the front porch and pointedly toasted each and every one of them.

"Didn't offer us any of that skunk piss, I see," Marty said calmly enough. "Might be I'll have both an Irish lass and a hot little Eye-talian lady in my bed tonight. Have me a real international love-in."

I nodded toward Marty when Kerri jumped from her chair to sit square on his lap. Shauna, red-eyed and pale, knelt beside him to caress his calloused hands.

I returned my thoughts to that day we'd all met. Kerri and Shauna, all young and sexy and comely, decked out in halter tops and ass-fitting cut-off jeans. Marty and I, in hacked-up camos and flip-flops, tanned and fit from four months of fighting, finagling, and fornicating in the lusty tropical sun, and lounging innocently between the stern fifties. Who knew that Navy nurses could be so drop-dead gorgeous, or that brown water sailors could be so appealing?

To enlighten further (need it or not), after the Rung Sat operation, our river assault boat was being re-armed and re-provisioned in the town of Vung Tau prior to sailing back to our normal operating area among the rivers and bayous of the Parrots Beak, the jungle enclave between Saigon and the Cambodian border. The three others of our boat's five-man crew were off that late morning, doubtless in pursuit of their own government-issue fun, leaving Marty and I, after drawing the short straws, the only squids (the Marine Corps fondly endearing term for Navy guys) aboard to maintain dutiful watch.

I recalled the girls leaning against the railing of the boardwalk leading to Beach Alpha. Kerri had called out suddenly, asking us what type of boat we manned.

I'll always be proud of my response: That this particular craft was the Official Vung Tau Harbor Tour Boat and that Marty would be honored to pay for a pair of dee-luxe tickets for the two lovely ladies. Though he's never said one way or the other, I wasn't quite sure that Marty truly appreciated the fated appropriateness of my wit at that particular moment.

The laughter of the two girls was encouraging though, and their eventual acceptance of our most precipitous invitation all but overwhelmed Marty and me. Hell, we nearly went over the side in our haste to escort these two visions aboard our fifty-foot vessel.

After a decent interval of about ten minutes, during which first names were exchanged, beers offered and accepted, and minute pleasantries were dispensed with, I had led Kerri to the pilothouse. No sooner had we entered this small, hot box when Kerri, claiming a need to get cooler, suddenly unleashed her magnificent breasts. She stood next to me, her dark nipples erect and pulsing, as I struggled valiantly to remember how to start the damned boat. When she put her hand to my cock, throbbing and thrumming against my strained camos, I nearly came in my drawers right then. I remember moaning just a little, forced myself to keep in mind that it probably wasn't good form to begin sucking the tits of a round-eye woman, doubtless an officer, whom I'd met only moments earlier.

I recall that after a few pithy comments, shucking the cumbersome camos and the aforementioned premature ejaculation, I finally got us headed off on our adventure.

I can vividly remember both ladies topless and waving gaily as we passed the two gunfire-support destroyers anchored near the entrance to Vung Tau Bay. The crews, I fondly recall, had lined the rails of the two warships, both of which cut loose with whistles and sirens in homage to our two passengers. I remember well an absolute mastery of my twenty-one-year-old world as the four of us cruised blithely into the South China Sea.

We'd hardly left the destroyers behind when, at my invitation, Kerri and Shauna joined me in the pilothouse. While I stood naked at the wheel, I noticed that both girls were speculatively eyeing my semi-erect dick. I had never been the recipient of such unabashed inspection before and the sensation was a bit confounding, though not altogether unpleasant. I considered myself even then at least adequately endowed, though I think I mentioned that Kerri insists I'm far more blessed than I am wont to acknowledge. Shauna, to her credit, did not put forth an opinion, at least that particular day, but seemed to approve of what I had to offer.

Kerri, gazing alternately at me and at Shauna, began to rub her tits in nonchalant insolence, the sheen of honest perspiration smearing and glistening. She ran her hands down her bronzed, ever so slightly rounded tummy and circled to her luscious hips, finally inching a wayward forefinger into her brimming belly button. She seemed to revel in the sensation of her own silken flesh, protuberant nipples and frothy hips. Shauna, I noticed, had become transfixed.

I would have been a bit more transfixed myself had I not the responsibility of maneuvering the boat among rocks and reefs, ships and sampans, and all the other assorted flotsam and jetsam congesting the harbor entrance. Suddenly Kerri unbuttoned her shorts and began lazily sliding them over those delicious hips, that superb ass. This brazen act immediately caught my full attention.

I noticed Shauna becoming more and more bewitched as this divinely endowed woman wriggled and oscillated and revealed. I don't at this late date recall how we kept from a collision with something, but as those cutoffs inched over those incredible hips, revealing shocking pink panties (which, I might add, survived Viet Nam only to die an agonized death at the hands of our twenty-year-old electric drier), I gazed from Shauna's fascinated eyes to Kerri's delicious hips, and felt that I had truly died and gone to heaven.

In any case, the cutoffs were drifting 'neath that magnificent rear while Shauna and I began to apprehend Kerri's sun-leavened thighs. Suddenly, the shorts dropped and Kerri stood clothed only in her now-legendary pink panties.

Shauna was panting and there was no way I was going to tear my eyes from this vision of erotica to conn the boat. I throttled back to idle, let the boat drift and to hell with anything in our way.

Gazing at Shauna, Kerri slithered her tongue around her perfectly formed lips and sensuously hooked her fingers through the waistband of those electric panties. Switching that sultry visage to my widening eyes, she unhurriedly started lowering the delicate undergarment millimeters at a time. Shauna moaned and impetuously put her hands onto, and then over Kerri's dusky shoulders. Breast to breast, nipple to nipple, the two women began to kiss, Kerri abandoning her task momentarily.

Marty entered the pilothouse then and stood in dazed confusion at the tableau of the two entwined goddesses. My recollection of the moment remains such that I was only vaguely aware of his presence, was barely cognizant, moreover, of which planet I was on.

Abruptly Kerri resumed her interrupted disrobing. Shauna, meanwhile, put hands to hips and all but ripped her own cutoff jeans to the deck. My enjoyment at this time knew no bounds, nor did my erection. I believe that seldom have a pair of Navy-issue panties such as those adorning Shauna's heavenly hips been so downright sexy, so altogether erotic in appearance as those I beheld that long ago moment.

Kerri resumed then her so-erotic hip-swivel, continuing the downward journey of her own enchanted panties. Marty, of course, had gained a considerable erection at the sights and sounds before him. He placed his member in the crack of Shauna's ass, his hands on her rotating hips, hips that now gyrated and swayed in concert with Kerri's hypnotically cycling pelvis, as yet not quite fully revealed. He promptly began his own gymnastics, maintaining a respectable rhythm quite unlike his ponderous attempts at barroom dancing.

Next up, Shauna drops a little surprise on me.