It had snowed the week before Thanksgiving in Watertown, New York. The burg with an unimaginative name, which matched its basic cultural footprint, was a small town west of Fort Drum and nearly on the shore of Lake Ontario, just to the west of the town, and about as far north in the United States you could get without spilling over into Canada. That, in itself, wasn't unusual, but it had been continuously snowing in that week, and already had reached twelve inches in drifting snow. This wasn't unusual in a town where, if you put a glass of water on your nightstand on a winter night, it would freeze and pop the glass before dawn.
However, it was perhaps not the best time for Scott Reynolds to be coming home unannounced for the winter holidays from his second tour in Afghanistan. Scott was on the drift himself, not knowing whether he wanted to pick up the pieces he'd left behind four years earlier in Watertown or reup for a third tour in the army—or maybe something else altogether. He had a few ties in Watertown, but there were a few elsewhere too—just a few anywhere. He'd pretty much drifted all of his life and most of his relationships had been casual. In his lifestyle, they were called hookups.
He'd taken the bus up from New York City. The snow storm touched down there too, but conditions had become increasingly worse as they were leaving the city on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The distance of some 320 miles between city and town, which normally wouldn't have taken more than seven and a half hours to drive, took two days in the snow, with a stop at a rundown motel outside Binghamton, New York, on Sunday night before they could get going again the next morning. The bus company hadn't paid for the motel rooms, but it had warned the passengers of the probably forced stop, because of the snow, and all had opted to take the trip. Most of them were trying to get someplace for Thanksgiving.
There hadn't been many on the bus, but they were doubled up in the rooms anyway. Scott had drawn a young Jewish guy named Josh, who was on his way up to Fort Drum to be drummed into the army. The young man had found out that Scott was just coming out of Afghanistan and had clung to Scott during the first leg of the journey, interminably asking him questions about the army and serving in Afghanistan and into more intimate matters, like how soldiers in combat got their needs served, that told Scott, twenty-six, that the young man, no more than twenty, was nervous about serving but interested in serving a big bruiser like Scott. Scott was experienced at picking up signals of gay interest and Josh was too inexperienced not to provide them. Scott also was experienced at taking his pleasures where he could get them.
Josh didn't stand a chance, assuming he wasn't fully prepared for a casual hookup.
Scott gave Josh a tutorial in how some guys managed to get their rocks off in combat conditions when he fucked him that night, holding the nervous Jewish boy under him in a strong embrace and fucking him deep, while Josh moaned and traced the pec and sleeve tattoo swirl of color on Scott's bulging musculature with his fingers, marveling at how the design resolved itself in a dragon's head on Scott's right pec. Josh hadn't known that soldiers were allowed to have tattoos, and Scott had given him a tutorial on the rules of that, while he let the younger man trace the tattoo lines with his fingers, start to pant, go into high heat, gasp when he saw what Scott had to put inside him, but still laid back and willingly opened his legs to the cock.
He had taken cock before, but never as arousingly and as fully controlled, erotic, and satisfied as this.
"Did you like that? Did that do you?" Scott asked when he had finished the young man and they were lying stretched out against each out, Scott's beefy arm around Josh's shoulders and Josh fingering the tattoo covering the right side of Scott's body from pec to shoulder and back down his arm, still in fascination, but still trembling.
"You're huge. I thought you'd split me."
"But did you like it? I stretched you, but I didn't split you. You can take more than you thought you could."
"Yes, I liked it."
"You won't have any trouble finding more of it at Fort Drum. They don't have enough to do there, especially in the winter. Fucking each other is something to do." Was that why he was coming back to Watertown, Scott wondered. Because it was so easy to hook up at Fort Drum, just a few miles up Route 11 from the town? That it had been so easy for him when he'd lived there before? He didn't know, but it was worth a thought. He couldn't drift on like this forever.
"And Afghanistan. Was it like that there?" Josh was back to the army-life questions.
"It could be. For those who want it. You wanted it tonight."
Josh didn't dispute that, sticking with his line of questioning. "All just casual and in-passing encounters, like this was, or were there serious relationships formed?"
"All just casual, like this," Scott said. Even while he said it, he knew it was a lie. "You couldn't afford getting serious with anyone in Afghanistan."
Josh didn't ask why. Scott might not have heard him if he had, because his mind had drifted back to nineteen months ago, out beside a vehicle he had been maintaining in a field encampment. Kentuck, his steady for three months, on top of him as Scott lay prone next to the wheel of a transport, both of them fully clothed in camouflage except for where it counted. Kentuck straddling Scott, fucking himself in a cowboy when shots rang out. A sniper attack. Blood spurting out of what was left of Kentuck's forehead as his boy slumped on top of Scott, protecting Scott from the follow-up shots. Scott had been contemplating calling it a day at the end of the first tour. But he reupped the next week.
"Uh, you don't think you could . . . that you would . . .?" Josh was asking as Scott's mind drifted back.
"Sure, why not?" He rolled over on top of Josh, putting his arms under the young man's legs and spreading and raising them. Josh arched his back, rolled his head up, clutched at Scott's bulging pecs and cried out.
"Shit, you're huge! You're too big!"
"Yes, yes, I am," Scott admitted. "And you're going to take it all and love it."
"Shit! Fuck! Fuck, yes! Fuck me! Fuck, you're killing me."
Scott grabbed the young man's wrists, forced his hands over his head, thrust hard, and killed Josh some more. It was best to make the most out of such chance encounters.
It was dark, after 8:00 p.m., when the bus let Scott off next to what was probably a sidewalk under the drifting snow on West Main Street, just north of the banks of the Black River, in the center of town, right in front of Schaffer's Exon station and garage. The gas station was owned—or had been four years ago—by the family of Scott's best friends and high school football team buddy, Jack Schaffer. From here it was just a two block walk north, up Morrison Street, to his dad's house. Josh had already been let off at Fort Drum's main gate, with just an exchange of cellphone numbers as a good-bye between them. There was no expectation, at least on Scott's part, of hooking up again. He knew Fort Drum. If Josh let his preferences be known, the soldiers there would eat him alive, and he wouldn't be needing anything from Scott. He'd been a sweet lay.
Neither of them had spoken to each other after they'd left the motel room and before boarding the bus. They'd sat at separate tables in the motel's breakfast room. They sat with each other in the bus, but they talked sparingly and neither spoke of hooking up again.
As the bus lurched off onto the snowy, frequently cleared but continually recovered West Main Street, Scott hefted his duffel bag on the back of his six-foot-three husky, all-muscle frame and crossed over to the mouth of Morrison Street. He hadn't phoned ahead that he was coming home—for a visit or longer, he didn't know himself. Not knowing from day to day what he would do, he hadn't registered this trip with his father, a general practitioner in town, serving mostly the poorer residents and giving them more care than they could afford. Scott had sent a trunk home with all his worldly goods, but that hadn't been before last Saturday. It wouldn't have arrived here yet, especially because of the snow.
The snow was falling heavily again as he trudged up Morrison in his combat boots, glad that he was still wearing them. He saw the problem when he was a block from the house, although it took a while to register with him as blinding as the snow was. The cold and wet was already getting under his fleece jacket, plastering his flannel shirt to his chest.
Scott stood there for a full twenty minutes looking at where his father's house had been, the house in which Scott and his younger brother, Steve, had been raised, where his father had raised them alone since Scott's mother had run off without them when Scott was nine. The house was a pile of ashes between two forlorn chimneys, rising two stories with nothing to connect to. He supposed it didn't matter than he hadn't called ahead. There was no ahead to call to.
He, of course, wondered about his father and whether he'd made it out. Scott's brother, Steve, now twenty-four, had already moved out and lived west of town, closer to Lake Ontario, where he worked at a water sports facility at Sackets Harbor in season. He must work somewhere else in the winter, but Scott didn't know where. He wasn't even sure if he had Steve's cellphone number. The brothers weren't that close. Steve was different from Scott and his father, and that difference kept the family on tenterhooks and distant from one another. But calling Steve might be a place to start. Or his dad's medical office a block over on Bradley Street. The office wouldn't be open at this time in the evening, though.
He didn't really feel like starting in either of those places. He knew what he wanted, who he wanted to see. He turned and trudged back to West Main Street, across the street, to Schaffer's gas station. There was an apartment over the office and three-bay bank of garages, and he'd seen that the lights were on there. Scott went to the covered staircase on the north side of the garage and climbed the stairs. He knew where he was going. He'd been here a thousand times before.
The door at the top of the stairs was opened by a tall, husky, muscular, hirsute blond giant. He was just in athletic shorts and flip-flops. The contrast was startling between him and Scott, standing on the threshold, covered in snow, and bundled up, but not really bundled up enough for the snowy conditions. Sopping wet, a duffle bag at his feet.
"Yes?" Jack didn't recognize Scott immediately.
"It's me, Scott, Jack. I tried going home, but there's no home left. I came here."
"Scott? Is that you? You're out of Afghanistan? You look like the abominable snowman. Get in here, man, out of the cold. What in the hell are you doing here? Visiting, or are you back to stay. Here because of the fire?"
"I don't know," Scott said, as if that were an answer to all of those questions. "I went home. There's been a fire. I don't know what's happening. I came here." He allowed Jack to drag him into the warm apartment. There was a fireplace in the living room, with a roaring fire in it. That's where Jack dragged Scott and began peeling the wet clothes off him.
"Yes, your house burned down. Saturday night. No, your dad and Cory are just fine. The house he owns that's attached to his medical office over on Bradley was vacant, and that's where they've moved."
"Cory? Is he still with Dad?" Cory had been a town waif Scott's dad had brought home after Cory had graduated high school without further prospects and had sponsored for technical school. He and Cory had been like brothers for a while—and then they weren't.
"Yes, Cory has his LPN and is working as your dad's nurse and office assistant now. But they're OK. But you. You need to get out of these clothes and into a hot bath. You'd die of exposure just walking over to Bradley now this time of night. And there's no telling if either of them is there anyway. Here, strip that off. I'll get us a couple of beers."
Scott was stripped down completely with his wet clothes puddled around him as Jack turned toward the kitchen.
