Highly trained, elite recon Marine cleans up his neighborhood and finds love along the way.
*
Another hot one, 3 in a row, it was an official summer heat wave, after just having had one last week and the week before. Judging by the extended weather forecast, next week didn't offer much relief from the 90 plus degree, high humidity weather. The kind of day that Frank could fry an egg on the sidewalk, he'd be too hot to eat it.
He was looking forward to seeing snow; it had been a while since he saw any. Yet, he should have a problem. He was alive, when so many of his best buddies were dead. Compared to what he endured during his 4 tours of desert duty in Afghanistan and Iraq and before that, during the Gulf War, in Kuwait, and special op missions in between, this weather was a relief.
Now that he was finally home, the chow he had here was better than eating baby food, mushy ready-to-eat meals, MRE's. Still coughing up and spitting out sand, he was looking forward to grilling out later. A linguist with an expert ear for dialects, fluent in 10 languages, he could curse in Pashto, Dari, Arabic, Kurdish, Urdu, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English. Even at his age, with his skills, he was still highly regarded by the CIA and a dozen private, mercenary outfits, that pay by body count, dead or alive. They all enticed him with money to return to active duty.
This hot summer weather was nothing like the deadly weather Frank endured, when wearing a vest and a helmet, carrying a weapon, and shouldering a full backpack of gear when in country, all while watching his ass and protecting the backs of his buddies. Relaxing, but never fully relaxed, always on edge, he remained vigilant. Continually on and never off, he couldn't help himself, that's how he was trained to be.
With his back to the wall, much in the way how Wild Bill Hickok sat when playing poker in the saloon, so that no one could surprise him from behind and shoot him in the back, he sat on his stoop having a beer in his shorts and tee shirt, while wearing his ever present unlaced combat boots. Sitting in this way from his perch on the top step, with a commanding view of the street, his back was one side he didn't have to watch. Normal men hate it when their backs are up against the wall but Frank preferred it. Besides, there was nothing normal about Frank. He was a trained killer, an assassin.
Already in a foul mood, he hated how his old neighborhood had deteriorated in his absence. Hoping to improve his mood, he listened to his favorite team lose a ballgame on the radio. His team losing another game, when in a pennant race, always put him in a lousy mood. Bored and antsy, bouncing off the wall, he was thinking about re-upping. He rubbed the sweat from his crew cut and spat his indecision on the sidewalk.
"Marine Corps! OORAH!"
Programmed to die for his country and for his buddies, removing him from combat was akin to bringing a cage fighter to a formal dance. Out of his element, he didn't belong here. He more belonged in the desert with his buddies, the guys who understood what they needed to do and did it to survive. The conscience that never came into play then, reared its ugly head now. He was having the headaches and the bad dreams again. He couldn't sleep.
He took a good look at his street. Foreclosures had taken their toll and every other house on the street was boarded up or had a for sale sign in front. With transients replacing familiar faces, now a stranger in his own neighborhood, he didn't recognize anyone. Not hard to find, the gutter collected needles and spent condoms; there was litter everywhere. The trees that lined his street were dead or dying. Pit bulls walked wanna-be tough guys and, in a four-on-one confrontation, he convinced the gang members that sold drugs on his street to find another corner in a different neighborhood to do their dirty business. With him home now and on duty 24/7, the Marine has landed, this neighborhood was on its way to being secured.
He grew up here and this used to be a beautiful street with kids playing and families gathering. Now, look at it. Symbolic of the state of the economy and the empty political rhetoric on the war on drugs and on gun control, his old neighborhood was no different than any other slum anywhere in America. A war zone and an unsafe place where residents had to watch their backs, this street could have been a street in Bagdad. What happened to his country?
Frank watched a woman walking on the other side of the street. He didn't recognize her and even though he never saw her before, he knew what she was. She was a young, pretty thing, petite but with big tits. She was a prostitute. He's been with enough of them all over the world to recognize their gait and their stare. They all had the same walk and look about them, especially when approaching a potential customer.
"Hi ya, baby," she said with a wave and a smile, as she neared. "Wanna date?"
There was always a man behind the woman and when he woke up from his drunkenness and put his pants and shoes on to leave, he felt bad about taking advantage of these women. Impossible to overcome what they had endured, he felt bad about leaving them behind to fend for themselves. Yet, if he let his guard down, they'd slit his throat. Had he been somewhere else, anywhere else, he'd take care of their man and set them free. Yet, where would they go and what would they do? Akin to indentured servitude, some women were born into that lifestyle and it was the only life they knew.
Suddenly, his mind morphed into a stew of naked body parts, tits, asses, and pussies. When not on duty, when not in combat, drunk out of his mind, he just wanted to forget and how better to chill than to be with a woman. Faceless women, as foreign to him as he was to them, they all looked alike. Yet, when with him, they all had one thing in common. No matter what language they spoke, he taught them all to say God bless America.
"Say it now, say it. Say God bless America," he'd tell them, just before he was about to cum.
"God bless America."
Some said it better than others, but it was the sentiment that counted. Most times, most women, didn't even understand what they were saying. Repeating his words phonetically, they smiled their cooperation for the money he gave them.
"Louder. Say it louder."
"God bless America!"
Appropriately, his way of indelibly stamping their brains with those words, after he fucked their bodies, maybe they'd make the connection in their minds. Certainly, if they repeated those words to the wrong person, they'd be targets themselves. He fucked them, just as his country fucked him with non-existent help from the Veterans' Administration for the emotional wreck that he was now. How could some Army doctor, who had never been in combat and who had never taken a life, help him? He was too far gone. Keeping him out there too long, his country fucked him up real good.
"God bless America," he said softly.
Needing to chill not to lose his mind, needing some sense of comfort from someone, he had been with so many women in so many countries, he lost count. More dangerous for the women than it was for him, in the part of the world where he was, stoning was the sentence for adultery and worse for prostitution. Yet, no matter, where he went, there were always women willing to do anything for money and anything to survive.
