Jonas Agonistes

As her tongue licked the top, her eyes locked on his, he felt that leg weakening sensation, and she noticed the dip of his legs giving away. She was on her side, her breasts emerging from the top of her babydoll, and he saw her left nipple. She looked at him and twisting her body spread her legs far apart. She wore no panties, no thong. He saw her red hair, trimmed, and the slit, and put his right index finger between her lips and he felt her other lips harden on him, and then noticed her breathing increase. He fondled her like that. There was no rush.

She was becoming wet, his finger was wet, and he bent to find her entrance. His finger sought and entered, and her legs parted just a little more. He moved then, swivelling, keeping his dick at her mouth and straddling her head, and he lowered his mouth to her labia and sucked one in. She was flat now on her back, legs splayed, and he was licking between her lips, running his hands up those hard legs, fingering her vagina occasionally. He trekked with his tongue to her button, flicking it, running his tongue around it, sucking it, and he heard her groan several times. They maintained this position for a long time, and he did not understand how he was able to continue without ejaculation. He felt her pull off his dick, and breathe, and her arms were about him. She finally said, playfully, "Don't you want to fuck me?"

He lifted his head and leaned to the side, to look at her, and smiled. "You mean it gets even better?"

She sat up, and pulled the babydoll from her, and she was fully and gloriously naked. Her breasts were small and centered by small, pointy nipples. She leaned back on her hands, and he said, "You're gorgeous."

She said, "It is time for us to do it."

He swivelled up to her and they kissed, despite the odor of sex from her cunt, and he felt his dick touch her mound. He pushed in, and it was at the right place, and then he felt her opening for it. Smoothly, steadily, his dick moved in and she gasped, her eyes wide, and her legs were beyond 180 degrees. "Oh, Jonas" she said, softly, "You stun me." He was in as far as he thought he could go, and there was still more of him. He moved in and out, in and out, and then there was a feeling like a pop, and he was all in, and she was throwing her head from side to side with eyes closed and little grunts. She was out of control, he thought, and he did not move but just filled her as completely as he could, but then her eyes opened and bore on him, and she said with a voice he'd never heard, quiet and insistent and husky, "FUCK me."

He thrust hard then, and soon as hard as he could, and she had tears but said softly, "Do me" and "Good" and his name. He was perspiring, she was a sheen of his and her perspiration, he was on top, her head was thrown back and her mouth open, her chest arched up, legs around his. He pinched and licked and sucked her nipples, thrusting into her. He felt it in him then, the welling up, the urge, and he knew he would not be long. He slowed.

"Emily, I am going to cum in you."

She dropped her shoulders to the mattress and reached her hands up behind his neck and clasped them there, and she said, "Then kiss me while you do."

Jonas gathered her in his arms, his chest and stomach to hers, and his lips to hers as he thrust hard and came, and again, and Emily was squealing into his mouth as her own waves matched his, but longer, amazing him with the strength of her clutch. He rested on top of her then, his dick shrinking but still inside for a moment longer. She turned away from him then, and he spooned against her back with his arm over her and her hands holding it against her. He kissed her hair and listened to her weeping quietly.

*

"Emily, Tom Marx." She was holding a phone to her ear.

"Colonel, what a surprise. I certainly did not expect you to call."

"Yes, well, I tried Jonas but his phone seems to be off and I wanted to reach him as soon as possible."

"Is something wrong?"

"No," he said, "not really. But a tenth picture has shown up. From al Gatar."

"I thought Summersill only took nine. Was someone else taking pictures?"

"No, I received an email from Summersill with a note that he held it back because he thought it was too graphic and he thought Jonas would be upset. He attached it to the email. He says he thought it might be important, and he felt guilty. I'm looking at it now. It shows Jonas kneeling on one knee, bending over the little girl in the middle of the street, with tears, and his hand on her arm. Her head is not clear but it is obviously... Anyway, I am submitting it to the archive. It won't be part of the report, but it will be an addendum, should the investigation ever be re-opened. More info discovered after the case was closed, which certainly casts no doubt on the finding, that sort of thing. "

"Will it upset people?"

"It's the most moving picture of tragedy in war I've ever seen. The look on his face..."

"I don't think we need to protect him from it," she said. "He's described exactly the action you say is in the picture, in therapy anyway. And to me. I think you should just send it to him in an email and put it in the file, along with the others."

She thought for a second. "Is Summersill in trouble?"

"No, I protected him. He only saw the investigators one day, and they were arrogant and implied all sorts of things to check his statement. It's not like he wanted to help them; they were threatening everyone in Second Platoon with this charge or that allegation. When he surrendered the pictures in the first place, he sent them to me-no one asked him for them, or knew he'd taken them. He did it to help Jonas. And it did."

"I'll tell Jonas. If you'd rather send it to me, I can prepare him for it and see what he thinks before I show him," she said.

"I'll do that. I need your email."

She told him, and a minute later the picture was in her In Box. She did not open it.

It was that night that Jonas visited and she said she had talked to the colonel.

"He said that Summersill took a tenth picture. He sent it to me, to show you."

Jonas asked, "Why didn't he just send it to me?"

"He wanted to talk to you first, see if you wanted to see it. He says it's of you and the little girl. I haven't opened the file yet."

"I see that kid every day," he said, looking out. They were at the kitchen table.

"I'll get my laptop," Emily said.

Jonas called to them in the other room. Jonas went to the doorway. "Mrs. Scott, Mr. Scott, they've found another picture from al Gatar. Emily is getting her computer to see it. Are you ...?"

"Oh, yes, indeed," they said over each other, and got up to come to the kitchen.

Emily sat at the table and turned on the computer, opened her email. She found the message and opened the attachment. The picture was very clear and filled most of the screen. She looked at it for several seconds and shook her head. She stood and turned to Jonas, embracing him with arms about his neck, a hug her mother joined. Walt just looked at the picture that filled the screen, struggling for imperturbability.

The picture and a story of the atrocity at al Gatar were in many newspapers the next Sunday. The New York Times had it on the front page, under the title "Genuflection to Tragedy." A paper in Australia said it "summarized eloquently the American adventure in Afghanistan." Most cleaned up the picture digitally, clarifying, but not aggrandizing the child's wounds. Jonas was identified as US Marine Second Lieutenant Jonas Simms. "Jeremiah in Agony" was mentioned, and calls for investigating the other officers involved in the incident followed.

*

We went to see Father Rick on a Wednesday two weeks before the wedding, when he was able to get away to see us. I had come home expecting to take back up with my old friend, but his ordination had led immediately to a new assignment far across the archdiocese, so we had only talked a few times. Rick greeted Emily with two hands holding her one, and he looked at her like she was marrying me for his sake. The guy was always a flirt, and he saw no reason to let a vow of celibacy change it. Rick is very tall and he towered over Emily. I warned her not to hurt her neck looking up.

"I saw the picture, Jonas," he said as he shook my hand. "I've never... I read 'Jeremiah,' and I just want to say, well, God bless you."

"I thought you only read religious books," I said.

"It is a religious book," he said.

Tom would get a kick out of that.

Rick wanted to know our views on children, raising them as Christians, and other things that would affect the religious family. It was amazing how similar his questions and ideas were to Pastor Lunker's. He said he'd contact the pastor as soon as he could, to arrange the ceremony. Rick is a gregarious guy, so I wondered how the older and more serious Pastor Lunker would respond. I should not have worried. By the end of the rehearsal dinner they were telling religious jokes and acting like best buddies.

So at the wedding we had a young Catholic priest in his vestments standing next to a Presbyterian pastor in his; the bride in a blue off-the-shoulder wedding dress, the groom in black; Emily's cousin Eva was maid of honor in medium blue but her dress had sleeves and covered her shoulders, and Deborah-a woman who scheduled flights for the air service-who had known Emily for a decade, was in similar blue but a high neck. Tall Colonel Marx wore his dress blues this day as best man and Chris, poor short Chris, stood beside him in black. The church was rather small, seating perhaps a hundred and twenty comfortably, but quite bright and beautiful.

When Pastor instructed us to face one another, we did. I took both Emily's hands as we had rehearsed the night before. Then I looked out at the crowd: Mom, Dad, in the first pew, and Emily's mom and dad on the other side of the church also in the first; and next to them the surviving grandparents. Barry Lynd was out there with his wife. Several of my students were toward the back-I had not sent them invitations, but I'd announced they were all welcome if they wanted to attend. I saw Jane Miller Austen and the man who stole her from me, trying to corral two little ones. Sharon Martin, my principal, was with her husband, the pale, white-haired, ghostly Perry Martin. Father Elkins was sick in the hospital and could not attend.

I saw then in the back two I had not been able to reach. A huge black man in plain clothes, casual pants and shirt and hair that said he was not on active duty-it was Deandre Turbish, and beside him Ken Healy, in class A green with another rocker making him a gunnery sergeant. They saw me looking at them, and both nodded slightly. They were grinning.

Emily saw me looking, and looked also, and noticed those two. I leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, and she smiled in surprise. The audience laughed.

She said, "We didn't rehearse that kiss."

I shrugged and said, "Sometimes I don't follow directions."

Tom Marx said quietly, "I'll vouch for that."

Father Rick shook his head, and Pastor Lunker even smiled. He looked at Rick and said, "Let's get these two married." No one remembers our vows. No one remembers our kiss after the vows. But Mom thought the kiss on the cheek before we began was touching.

There was a moment then of congratulations before the recessional, after Pastor Lunker presented us as husband and wife. We visited each set of parents and grandparents, accepting congratulations, and then returned to the altar. I looked out at Deandre and Ken, made eye contact and nodded with a smile. The maids and men gathered around to congratulate us. I thanked Tom for finding Turbo and Ken.

He said, "It wasn't the whole Corps that abandoned you. A bunch of grunts will never forget the example you set."